A-Z Voip - Book

IP Telephony from A to Z
Chapters One to Eight E

ebook
The Complete IP Telephony eBook

TABLE OF CONTENTS
IP Telephony from A to Z
Chapter 1
Chapters One to Eight E
ebook
The Benefits of IP Telephony

The Complete IP Telephony eBook
Highlights the benefits of IP telephony and discusses the costs in detail so that you can make decisions
about your deployment.
Chapter 2
The Decision: Vendor Evaluation and Selection
Provides you with resources to help you evaluate and select IP telephony vendors.
Chapter 3
Planning: The Implementation Calendar
Provides you with a high-level timeline for the implementation, from research to actual deployment.
Chapter 4
Ensuring Reliability in IP Telephony
Covers varying IP telephony solution architectures, mean time between failure, mean time to repair,
network reliability, and application reliability.
Chapter 5
Handsets and Interfaces
Outlines the many benefits of todays’ well-designed and highly functional telephones.
Chapter 6
Security
Highlights the steps one should take to ensure IP telephony traffic is secure against outsiders and
unauthorized individuals.
Chapter 7
Mobility and Wireless
Highlights the requirements and methods for going wireless.
Chapter 8
Quality of Service
Covers Quality of Service (QoS) in detail, as well as your options in terms of circuit transports.
Then, it delves into the internal infrastructure and the entire process of applying QoS.
The Benefits of IP Telephony
1
Chapter 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
This chapter highlights the benefits of IP telephony and discusses the costs
in detail so that you can make decisions about your deployment.
The Benefits of IP Telephony

1
Chapter 1
The Savings 1
The Added Capabilities 1
IP Telephony Savings 2
Customer Service Advantage 2
The Productivity Boosts 3
The Growth Factor 4
Some Features Available in IP Telephony Solutions 4
The Management Ease 4
The Costs 4
All capital costs per user, by vendor 5
Total cost of ownership per user 6
Ready to Make the Switch 6

One of the key drivers of converging voice and data networks is cost savings. Money can be saved, with
the right IP telephony solution, in almost all areas—from deployment and management time and costs
to ongoing toll and lease charges. IP telephony can also help your organization gain a competitive
advantage, boost employee productivity, and enhance customer service. However, there are important
considerations to analyze when deciding on a solution, including: equipment costs, which include the
cost of the infrastructure equipment (voice switches) and handsets (analog or IP telephones or a mix of
both); operational startup costs, including the time and resources it takes to plan, install and trouble-
shoot the solution once it is deployed; and finally, maintenance costs, which includes the cost of labor
to maintain the equipment plus whatever costs must be paid to the solution vendor for maintenance
and upgrades. This chapter will highlight the benefits of IP telephony and go over the costs in details so
that you can make decisions about your deployment.
The Savings
When you consider what most businesses pay for long-distance, you wouldn’t see a huge need to move
to IP telephony, necessarily. Large corporations can be paying pennies per minute for long-distance
within the U.S. So while companies beyond North America may realize significant savings on toll
charges, these savings are not usually enough to convince a North American company to switch to IP
telephony.
Savings for most enterprise networks come from consolidating the voice and data network and using
fewer circuits from the public switched telephone network (PSTN). In addition to circuit cost savings,
as mentioned earlier, an IP infrastructure requires less time for moves, adds and changes (MACs) and
often eliminates the need to hire an outside vendor or service provider to handle them. Moving an IP
telephone station temporarily or permanently or adding a new user usually simply entails carrying out a
quick and simple GUI-based command. With traditional PBX systems, moving an employee can cost
hundreds of dollars in labor. In other words, with IP telephony, each user has their own IP phone profile
and the network doesn’t care where anybody is located at any particular time, so MACs are simply a
matter of conducting a few commands and can often be easily handled by the user.
With IP telephony, management savings are usually immediate since the information technology team
can support the voice network as well as the data network because they’re now one in the same. There
is no longer a need to have two teams of technical professionals to handle each entity, which adds up to
tremendous savings. Further savings are seen right away when an enterprise needs to make a change,
such as re-locating an office temporarily in the case of construction. The IT staff simply makes the
changes from anywhere on the network (or remotely if need be) and a new temporary office is up and
running without outside callers ever being the wiser.
Finally, infrastructure tools like physical ports are no longer needed for IP telephony because physical
circuit-switched ports aren’t necessary. An IP connected voice mail server is all that’s needed.
All of these cost savings are tremendously appealing characteristics of IP telephony. When you add to
them the features that are available for employees, call centers and receptionists, it quickly becomes
obvious that IP telephony is going to continue winning converts.
The Added Capabilities

Call centers in many enterprises today are extremely expensive because dedicated buildings are often
| Chapter 1 | The Benefits of IP Telephony

built to accommodate the many staff members. When
a company needs to add additional call center staff-
IP Telephony Savings
ers, traditional PBX-based phone systems must also • Toll charges – least cost routing avoids
grow in blocks because ports are bought in groups, toll charges.
rather than scaling seamlessly with each new hire. • Management costs
These factors make call centers very expensive to
- System management labor – time and
maintain and scale. However, with an IP telephony
money saved.
solution, call centers can grow one phone at a time
and call centers can span several buildings across - Users’ personal profile changes – handled
many states. There is no longer a need for one huge by users, not IT staff.
building to house all of the call center agents. In - MACs – quick and easy to handle from
addition, enterprises are able to leverage expertise anywhere on the network.
across entire organizations, rather than hoping to find • Physical circuit-switched ports no longer
a highly skilled team in one location to answer incom- required.
ing inquiries. With an IP telephony solution, a user
• Fewer circuits from the PSTN needed.
can sign in from wherever they are (even at home)
and is instantly online and available as part of the call
center team.
Another customer service feature available in IP telephony solutions is the hunt group. This feature makes
certain that all calls are answered by a live person rather than voice mail, which can be frustrating for
callers. With various hunt groups enabled, a call into an organization rings extensions in a specified se-
quence or rings multiple extensions at once (depending on the company’s preference), ensuring callers
reach the person they need without navigating through menus or being forced to wait in a queue.
Remote sites are also easy to bring online. With traditional PBX systems, adding a remote site often re-
quires adding a PBX extender, which can cost almost $1,000 per user for the equipment alone. With IP
telephony, again, a user can log in from anywhere and have all the same capabilities as if they were working
at headquarters or within the call center building. With IP telephony, to the outside world, it can seem as
though you have call center locations scattered around the globe to be available 24/7, when really you are
simply utilizing IP telephony features such as time-of-day routing and call forwarding to make sure calls are
answered quickly by a live human being; these people can be working out of geographically-dispersed
branch offices, at remote locations, or even at home. Callers always reach a qualified customer service
representative, regardless of what time it is. You are also able to manage peak calling times by having the
ability to add other employees, regardless of their location, to the call center to help meet the overflow
demand.
With IP telephony, users can also easily re-route their calls so that they are reached wherever they will be
working—they can make these changes themselves, without asking for IT assistance. This “find me” feature
also enhances customer service as well as productivity by ensuring a caller reaches the right person,
regardless of where he or she might be working. An employee can even program his or her extension to
ring based on status—ring through when he or she is in the office, forward to a cell phone when there is no
answer, or forward to a colleague when the line is busy.
The Customer Service Advantage

IP telephony offers organizations tremendous customer service value-add. First of all, IP telephony systems
IP Telephony from A-Z eBook |

provide thorough information right at the time a call comes in by popping data onto an agent’s screen.
This information can include the most basic of information, such as caller ID information. By integrating
specific business applications with the IP telephony system, more in-depth information can populate
the screen, including the caller’s buying patterns, address, current account status, and more. Many IP
telephony systems also provide for operators significant background information on the current caller’s
experience, such as where the call originated, how many times he or she has been transferred, and
whether or not the right person is available to take the call. When the person is again transferred, IP
telephony systems eliminate the chance of a caller being asked the same question twice (which is
frustrating for callers, and frankly, poor customer service) because the most current information,
including notes taken during the present call, populates the next person’s screen.
IP telephony systems also allow organizations to implement skills-based routing, whereby calls are
routed via an automatic attendant (attendant prompts the caller to choose from a selection) to the
most appropriate agent based on criteria like language, experience, technical expertise, and other
details. Advanced features that most service providers charge for are also available “free” with IP
telephony, including three-way calling and a built-in conference call bridge. This can further aid in
customer service when more resources are required to fulfill a customer request or inquiry, and it also
allows conference call access by international parties, a feature most expensive conference call services
do not provide.
Finally, IP telephony enables self-service options. For instance, when a caller simply wants to find out
information about their own account, interactive voice response (IVR) within IP telephony systems
enable callers to securely access that information by providing specific information. This eliminates the
need for a call center agent to take time to answer a call, and it also eliminates the frustration that can
occur if a caller is put in queue on hold for the next available agent to find out information that is
readily available.
The Productivity Boosts

IP telephony productivity programs can often transform a company’s desktop application, such as
Microsoft Outlook, into a multi-media communications center for integrated messaging, providing such
features as directory dialing, contact screen pop, caller ID, call waiting, and calendar integration.
Employees have more control over both voice and e-mail messages, in one centralized system, and can
forward voice mails to colleagues for improved collaboration and customer issue resolution. IP telepho-
ny system reports also keep a history of calls made and received, which is helpful in meeting various
compliance regulations. Sophisticated features include on-the-fly document sharing and dial-by-name
capabilities. Workers are dialing one another, conferencing, transferring calls between locations, and
changing their voice mail preferences all with the click of a mouse. There is no longer a need to call the
help desk to make such changes. The bottom line is that employees spend less time navigating complex
telephone systems and more time performing critical, revenue-producing tasks.
Soft phones further free people from their desks, delivering telephony capabilities to any PC. With calls
directed to a laptop and a headset plugged into the USB port, employees can work from anywhere using
their computer and its built-in microphone. Employees who travel a lot appreciate the power and
simplicity of a soft phone and customers appreciate not having to dial different numbers to reach
someone who is traveling.

The Growth Factor Some Features Available in
IP Telephony Solutions (not
IP telephony systems allow for quick and easy comprehensive)
scalability to accommodate new locations or growth
within existing locations, as well as the ability to add • Business application integration (for
people one at a time as needed, rather than investing instance, tying IP telephony to CRM
in equipment that will handle more than an organiza- database)
tion needs at the time. Scalability benefits also work • Calendar integration
downward: when an organization reduces its staff • Call waiting
count, it is simply a matter of removing those users’
• Caller ID
profiles from the IP telephony solution. Companies
are no longer tied to long leases for equipment that • Click-of-a-mouse simplicity—employees
remains underutilized. make or transfer calls right on their
computer
The Management Ease • Conference call capabilities with on-screen
document sharing
The best IP telephony systems have intuitive brows-
er-based management interfaces, allowing companies • Contact screen pop and comprehensive
to manage the entire system—from switches to voice information about each caller
mail, automated attendant, and desktop applica- • Desktop application (i.e., Microsoft
tions—from anywhere on the network. The best Outlook) integration
management interfaces make adding a new user a • Dial-by-name capability
snap and automatically update every switch and
• Features easy to navigate for users
directory feature, including the dial-by-name and
number attendant and online directory. System • Four or five-digit dialing to anyone,
updates are also quick and easy, taking an hour or regardless of location
two at the most when vendors release new code. • Mobility—users can work from anywhere
• Three-way calling
In addition to managing the system itself, managing
users and MACs is simplified tremendously. Employ-
ees can make most of the changes to their profiles without bothering the information technology profes-
sionals, and for changes that do require further expertise, IP telephony systems make it simple. There is no
longer a need to spend time and money on having a service provider come in. These costs alone can save
an organization thousands of dollars a month.
Nemertes Research, which is one of the few research firms that focuses specifically on IP telephony,
suggests that you start the process by carefully assessing the size of your rollout. This consideration is not
dependent on company revenue but how many stations you need the solution to support. You will analyze
solutions for the time it takes to install these stations, and estimate your growth and how your particular
solution’s scalability will affect the deployment.
The Costs
Nemertes Research interviewed IT professionals from a wide variety of companies and analyzed four
leading vendors in specific areas, including total hardware costs, network upgrades, IP handsets, manage-
ment tools, and conferencing/collaborative applications. From these in-depth interview came a comprehen-
sive report entitled, “Convergence & Next-Generation WAN Technologies” (February 2006). This section
will look at some of the costs involved in an IP telephony solution deployment, as well as provide high-level
results of the interviews conducted.

Capital costs are obviously the first line of investment for an IP telephony implementation. This is
determined based on how many locations and users you have and a knowledgeable and experienced
integrator can help you with this. How many switches and telephones will you need? If you need to,
make sure you can phase the solution in over time and use your existing analog lines for some amount
of time before switching to IP handsets. Nemertes Research calculated the cost of capital per user, by vendor
solution (see Figure 1.1 below).
All Capital Costs per User
$1,250
Mean Capital Cost Per User
$1,000
$750
$1,272
$1,220
$1,094
$500
$817
$729
$578
$434
$250
$308
0.00
Cisco Avaya Nortel ShoreTel
Vendor for Cost Analysis
Less than 1,000 users 1,000 users and up
Figure 1.1 | All Capital Costs per User, by Vendor

Source: Nemertes Research
The planning and design phase of any rollout is one of the most important. Consider your team and
think of how you will divide up responsibilities. Also, consider whether you will need to add to or
reduce your team size. For the implementation, decide on a few team leaders who will commit to
making themselves available in the off-hours when necessary until the deployment is complete. The
best solutions are easy to implement rather quickly and seamlessly, but you will still want some key
people available throughout the deployment.
Installation is the time it takes to physically deploy and configure the solution—it does not include
training. Again, consider carefully who is available to help with the installation, taking all things into
consideration such as work schedule flexibility, knowledge and expertise, and the ability to work under
pressure. Consider your business and determine the best time to deploy the solution and when it will be
easiest to switch over to the IP telephony solution.
Next up is troubleshooting—the time it takes to make changes immediately after the deployment until
it works properly. Who is going to be available throughout the deployment right up until the minute you
determine that everything is working perfectly? Consider the first few days and how you’ll staff the help
desk around the clock with people who are substantially knowledgeable about the infrastructure, the
configuration, and the features of the handsets.

Next up are the costs for staffing to support the new implementation on a regular basis. How easy is it for
your current staff to support the new IP telephony system? Generally, it is very easy for existing network
staff to support IP telephony solutions because they work on the data infrastructure, which is what they
already know well.
Management is the next cost consideration. What are your staff members doing each day to support the
solution? Can things be handled in-house, without wasting time and money on an outside vendor or service
provider to handle personnel MACs? According to Nemertes Research, MACs become very easy with IP
telephony: Research participants estimate the time involved for an IP MAC at a mere 10 minutes or less,
compared to the 30 to 90 minutes required for a TDM MAC. This means that total cost savings, depending
on the average number of MACs at a given organization, can be significant.
Nemertes Research ultimately calculated the total cost of ownership (TCO) for IP telephony solutions from
leading vendors (see Figure 1.2 below). These numbers were calculated considering all of the costs listed
above. This gives you an overview of costs for each vendor’s solution based on the implementation size.
Total Cost of Ownership per

User-IP Telephony Systems
$4,000
Dollars per User
$3,500
$3,000
$2,500
$2,000
$3,384
$3,365
$1,500
$2,537
$1,970
$1,000
$1,127
$1,384
$1,223
$865
$500
0.00
< 1,000 units/station > 1,000 units/station
Figure 1.2 | TCO per User

Source: Nemertes Research
Ready to Make the Switch?

IP telephony is the way of the future, according to Nemertes Research, for a number of reasons. First,
vendors are no longer investing research and development dollars into legacy TDM equipment. Second, IP
telephony has simplified communications for numerous organizations and their positive results have been
shouted from rooftops (or at least highlighted in well-respected trade journals). With TDM, there’s no
interoperability, transferring between offices is not an option, and employees are often on different voice

mail systems so forwarding messages is not possible. With IP telephony, companies instantly improve
productivity with robust feature sets such as built-in conference call capabilities, four-digit dialing
across locations, call center capabilities, and integration with desktop applications. Because of robust
features like the ability for an employee to log in from any phone, employees are not tied to a desk.
A Network World special report suggests that organizations should consider transitioning to IP
telephony when:
• They are using IP Centrex lines that will support phone and Internet service on the same network.
Moving to IP telephony will immediately reduce costs because these lines are so expensive.
• The organization is moving to a new building. Since the wiring does not yet exist, it’s simple to
create a consolidated data and voice network.
• They are coming to the end of a PBX lease agreement or the current phone system is outdated,
obsolete or unsupported by a vendor or service provider.
• The company has offices in different area codes and employees dial a lot of long-distance numbers.
The reduction in toll charges will be immediate and significant.
You will also want to consider IP telephony for your organization if:
• Your locations shift in size often
• Locations are added regularly
• You have a relatively small technology staff
• You use a great deal of outsourced telephony services that are beginning to add up
• Many of your employees frequently work remotely
Once you’ve evaluated your organization carefully, analyzing the costs of your current telephony
solution along with your employee productivity and customer service needs, and decided that
indeed, IP telephony is the way to go, the next chapter will help you with the vendor evaluation and
selection process.

The Decision: Vendor
Evaluation and Selection 2
Chapter 2
This chapter provides you with resources to help you evaluate
and select IP telephony vendors.
The Decision: Vendor

Evaluation and Selection 2
Chapter 2
Expectations 1
Convergence experience, expertise and vision 1
Expert, responsive support 1
Customer-focused approach to business 1
Choices, Choices 2
Vendors Analyzed 2
Avaya 2
Cisco 2
Nortel 3
ShoreTel 3
Issuing the RFP 3
RFP: From Concept to Paper 3
Seeing is Believing 5
Decision Factors 7
Last but Not Least: Ease of Use 9
The Bottom Line 9

You’ve made the decision to go with IP telephony after careful consideration, but if convergence is new
to you personally and to your organization overall, the decision is likely accompanied by worry and
concern about making the right choices. Your choice of technology vendor for this transition, as in any
decision, is one of the most important. InfoTech, a recognized leader in project consulting and global
research in over 90 countries worldwide, thoroughly researched how enterprise decision makers choose
their vendor and reported on its findings in a report entitled, “Strategies for IP Telephony Evaluation
and Migration” (April 2005). This information will be of great benefit to you since those interviewed by
InfoTech have successfully deployed various new technologies, including IP telephony.
Expectations
InfoTech reports that enterprise decision makers generally have three main areas of expectation that
help them choose the right vendor. These are areas you’ll want to consider as you embark upon the
vendor evaluation phase.
1. Convergence experience, expertise and vision

2. Expert, responsive support
3. Customer-focused approach to business
Convergence experience, expertise and vision

Look closely at vendors to determine whether or not they are committed to IP telephony. Have they
built their solution as a true IP telephony system, or are they jury-rigging an old PBX-based solution to
“look like” an IP telephony solution? Are their solutions built with flexibility, scalability, and longevity in
mind? Will you have to completely rip out your old phone system and move to IP telephony in one fell
swoop, or has the vendor built its solution with a phased approach in mind for those organizations that
need to replace their phone system over time?
Expert, responsive support

When you’re working with a vendor during the early stages of consideration, try reaching their technical
support team during off-hours. Do you have easy access to technical support representatives and a full
range of maintenance and support services? Have they committed to working closely with you during
initial deployment as well as future and ongoing projects? While you’ll almost certainly have quick and
easy access to a sales representative and possibly a pre-sales engineer during the evaluation phase, you
need to find out how you’ll be treated once you’ve already deployed your system. Is vendor responsive-
ness just as good for customers as it is for prospects?
Customer-focused approach to business

This area focuses on the vendor’s commitment to your success. Don’t let vendors come into the pro-
posal using a hard sell approach. If they do, they aren’t demonstrating a commitment to your success
but rather a commitment to their own success (meeting their quota). For real proof points, ask to see a
list of the company’s latest customer installations and ask if you can speak with those customers. If
things have gone smoothly, they won’t hesitate to let you talk to a customer in the early phase of their
deployment. Don’t settle for just a list of customers that have been using the vendor’s system for years.
Call early phase customers and ask them if the vendor is still in close contact with them, calls to proac-
tively find out about the installation, and provides onsite support at a moment’s notice during the
deployment.
| Chapter 2 | The Decision: Vendor Evaluation and Selection

InfoTech found that while many companies vary in why they choose IP telephony, most enterprises have
found the most common anticipated benefits as:
1. Lowering total operating costs

2. Enhancing end-user productivity
3. Improving IT organization efficiency
4. Reinforcing market differentiation and brand image
Choices, Choices
In their 2006 report, “Convergence & Next-Generation WAN Technologies,” Nemertes Research provides a
comprehensive and unbiased look at what organizations are doing specifically in terms of which vendors
they choose. It is an independent and impartial report that translates mountains of data into succinct
information organizations can use for convergence planning. The firm collected information by conducting
in-depth interviews with IT professionals from a wide variety of companies of various sizes spanning many
industries. While the industries varied greatly, all of the respondents had a similar interest in IP telephony
and were committed to making technology investments that enhance productivity and the bottom line and
prepare their organizations for the future. Nemertes Research presents an overview of how the respondents
have assessed IP telephony solutions and how they eventually selected a system vendor. Included in the
report are recommendations about which vendors to consider, including a complete IP telephony system
vendor analysis, how to thoroughly evaluate all of the solutions available, how to plan for convergence, and
how to actually conduct the rollout.
Vendors Analyzed
Organizations in the past have had few vendors to choose from. According to Nemertes Research, today
there are more than 25 vendors and carriers out there to meet IP telephony needs. The increase in compe-
tition means more innovation and better products from a wider selection of companies. Nemertes Research
analysts established that the most frequently evaluated IP telephony system vendors today are: Avaya,
Cisco, Nortel and ShoreTel. The following section will highlight each of those vendors, but keep in mind
that there are at least a dozen more to evaluate, depending on the size and particular needs of your
organization.
Avaya
Avaya offers IP telephony solutions with its IP Office and MultiVantage solutions, which include IP tele-
phones, as well as voice switches, media gateways, communication servers, wireless telephones, communi-
cation applications, and more. According to Nemertes Research, Avaya’s key strengths are its product
features, technology, and overall performance, while weaknesses, according to respondents, fall in the areas
of customer service, ease of use (installation and troubleshooting), management tools, and VAR expertise.
Cisco
Cisco is a recognized network infrastructure equipment leader and offers IP telephony solutions under its
Unified Communications family. Products include switches, telephones, communication applications, and
more. Nemertes Research notes that Cisco’s overall performance and technology areas have been rising
steadily, according to respondents, while product features have left much to be desired. However, many
networks are built on Cisco networking equipment and it would be hasty to overlook the company during
an IP telephony vendor review.

Nortel
Nortel offers more than IP telephony solutions and has been around since its 1895 founding as North-
ern Electric and Manufacturing, supplying telecommunications equipment for Canada’s telephone
system. Nortel was the first networking vendor to provide an end-to-end IP telephony solution certified
by the U.S. Defense Department Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) in 2004. For 2005, Nor-
tel’s top areas, as noted by Nemertes Research, were performance, product features, value, and cus-
tomer service. Its weaknesses, according to respondents, were in the areas of ease of installation, VAR
expertise and management tools.
ShoreTel
ShoreTel offers end-to-end IP telephony solutions including its ShoreGear voice switches and
ShorePhone IP telephones, as well as communication applications, call center functionality, and more.
ShoreTel scored highest in all categories studied by Nemertes Research. Four specific areas in which
the company excels are value, technology, ease of installation and troubleshooting, and performance.
The company’s areas for improvement included management tools, solution experience and VAR
expertise.
Issuing the RFP

If you work with a network integration partner or consultancy, you may want to call on them to help
you with the Request for Proposal (RFP). You may also request a sample RFP from any of the vendors
you’ll be evaluating, but be careful to go through and make sure the one you use is comprehensive and
not skewed toward any one vendor. If you decide to write the RFP yourself, here is an outline on how to
go about it.
RFP: From Concept to Paper

Assemble your RFP team. Be sure and include an IT representative, a budget specialist, and any senior
executives in charge of departments that will use the technology extensively (sales, telemarketing,
etc.). This team should be briefed on the IP telephony project and should understand what new capa-
bilities such a solution will offer so that they are informed enough to give you an extensive “wish list”
for features that will make them more productive.
1. Select a project leader. This person should be experienced in networking and IP telephony, if
possible, and should be able to answer basic technical questions related to the technology, if not the
specific vendor solutions.
2. Assess what you need from the IP telephony solution.
• Evaluate the current situation, including costs, etc.
• Identify key goals.
• Review most common product capabilities and decide on the importance of them.
• Determine if there will be training required.
• Estimate the cost of the project.
3. Record your requirements, goals, and recommendations in a tentative plan.
4. Present your plan to the appropriate organizational leaders (executive management, financial
department, etc.). Get their input before writing the proposal.
5. Write the proposal. A typical proposal contains:

• A summary of the proposal.
• A statement of what you need – the reason you’re looking for a new solution. Include every
capability the RFP team has mentioned—be sure and get input from executives, managers, and
staff level employees so that every need is met. Do not overlook the obvious and assume that
every vendor provides one specific capability (you know the saying, “do not assume anything”).
Conversely, what is missing from the current telephony solution should also be noted.
• A weighted ranking of all of the capabilities and features should be included (see figure 2.1 for a sample
weighted ranking worksheet). Be specific in the features/capabilities list and avoid “buzz” words that
each vendor could define differently. If necessary, describe any word that could be misconstrued, such
as “availability,” which vendors often define differently. Again, don’t assume. Include every single
capability that you need. The list should be exhaustive. In other words, don’t omit “voice mail boxes for
every employee” from the list because you assume all vendors provide them.
• A description of how the project will be implemented and evaluated.
• Provide information about your organization and its technology goals.
• Include a project schedule. Indicate when you want the new IP telephony solution in place. Provide
details on how you want to implement: in phases, within three months from the date of selection, etc.
Be sure to include how you want each phase to be implemented so that you get as much out of your
old equipment as possible and extend the life of existing equipment and handsets.
• Provide an approximate budget.
• Conclude the RFP with specific open-ended questions for vendors, such as:
» What is your approach to training? Where is training held and how long does it take? Will the
price of the solution cover travel time and expenses for your staff to attend if it is offsite?
» Is there a guaranteed response time for support calls? How will your system be updated? Is
telephone support all that’s covered in maintenance fees or are other things covered? Is there an
option for hourly support? How many support staffers are on call 24 hours a day? Does the
solution contract come with a support guarantee?
» What is your history? How long has your company been in business? How many customers do
you have? How many new customers have you signed on in the past year? The past six months?
Are there any current merger discussions?
» What about customer references—to whom can we speak? Beyond happy customers, ask to
speak with the most recent customers. A reputable company should be able to give you refer-
ences from the most recent three-month period.
» How are upgrades handled and what are the typical costs involved? Also, ask what the process is
for a customer to make suggestions and specifically ask if they can name some features that
were a result of suggestions from users.
» What kind of “bake-offs” and industry reports mention your company? Ask for references in the
form of reputably published reports and articles.
6. Submit the proposal to the vendors you’ve selected in your long list. Your integration partner or
consultant, if you have one, can help you with this process, or simply e-mail or fax it to your vendor
list.

Seeing is Believing
The next step, after issuing the RFP, is to closely review the proposals from each vendor. It will be
helpful to use a weighted ranking system to score each vendor based on your long list of requirements.
First, rank each requirement based on the vendor’s answer to your checklist items. See Figure 2.1 for a
sample worksheet.
Step 1 In Theory
Ranking This section is where you will simply
0=unsatisfactory note whether the vendor offers specific
10=excellent capabilities
Criteria Answer Score Weight Extended

Cost of solution includes hardware, software and installation No 0 10 0
Years in business 7 8 10 80
Number of customers 200 9 10 90
Solution can be implemented in phases Yes 10 8 80
Support 24/7 No 0 9 0
Guarantees 4-hour replacement Yes 10 8 80
Offers wireless solution Yes 10 7 70
Features
Voice mail for unlimited extensions No 0 10 0
Centralized management of e-mail and voice mail Yes 10 8 80
Intuitive GUI that simplifies MACs Yes 10 10 100
Call forwarding No 0 10 0
Caller ID Yes 10 10 100
4 or 5-digit dialing across locations No 0 10 0
Workgroup capabilities Yes 10 9 90
Hunt capabilities No 0 9 0
Call center capabilities Yes 10 10 100
In-depth information about caller “pops” onto screen Yes 10 8 80
Ability to integrate an IP telephony system with other business apps No 0 10 0
Least-cost routing functionality No 0 10 0
Score 950
Figure 2.1 Sample weighted worksheet for vendor evaluation—not an exhaustive list.
Next, ask to see a demo and request a sample set-up to test the solution in your office so you can revise
the score based on actual experience. Once you have seen a demo or tested the solution, revise your
weighted worksheet to reflect your actual experience. See Figure 2.2 for the revised worksheet and
score.

Step 1 In Theory Step 2 In Reality
Ranking This section is where you will simply note This section is where you will score
0=unsatisfactory whether the vendor offers specific each vendor’s capabilities after
10=excellent capabilities testing
Criteria Answer Score Weight Extended Score Weight Extended

Cost of solution includes hardware, No 0 10 0 0 10 0 These scores
software and installation
remain the
same.
Years in business 7 8 10 80 8 10 80
Number of customers 200 9 10 90 9 10 90
Solution can be implemented in Yes 10 8 80 10 8 80
phases
Support 24/7 No 0 9 0 0 9 0
Guarantees 4-hour replacement Yes 10 8 80 10 8 80
Offers wireless solution Yes 10 7 70 10 7 70
Features
Voice mail for unlimited extensions No 0 10 0 0 10 0
Centralized management of Yes 10 8 80 3 8 24

e-mail and voice mail
Intuitive GUI that simplifies MACs Yes 10 10 100 4 10 40
Call forwarding No 0 10 0 0 10 0
Caller ID Yes 10 10 100 8 10 80
4 or 5-digit dialing across locations No 0 10 0 0 10 0
Workgroup capabilities Yes 10 9 90 8 9 72

Hunt capabilities No 0 9 0 0 9 0
Call center capabilities Yes 10 10 100 7 10 70
In-depth information about caller Yes 10 8 80 4 8 32
“pops” onto screen
Ability to integrate an IP telephony No 0 10 0 0 10 0

system with other business apps
Least-cost routing functionality No 0 10 0 0 10 0
Score 950 Revised Score 718
Figure 2.2 Revised sample weighted worksheet for vendor evaluation, with experiential
scores—not an exhaustive list.

Decision Factors
Once you’ve collected all of the information and carefully evaluated your chosen vendors, including the four
leaders, think carefully about your organization’s priorities in general, and carefully consider the following
qualities so you can clearly articulate your requirements in these areas as you approach your final decision.
These are areas which InfoTech has determined enterprises consistently rank as top priorities.
High system reliability/availability

Do the vendor’s products include redundant components in the case of a failure? Are there ways to re-
route calls around a failed switch, for instance? Is there a threshold past which the system’s perfor-
mance will degrade? Ask for specific examples of each vendor’s system maintaining availability under
the harshest circumstances. Ask customer references specifically about how reliable the system is.
Equivalent voice quality to TDM

You don’t want your own customers to call your organization and know right away that you’re using some-
thing of lesser quality than a TDM system. Ask the vendor if it’s possible for you to go to a customer site and
listen to actual phone calls to evaluate the voice quality yourself. Or ask customer references specifically if
anybody knows they are on an IP telephony system or if it is assumed that it is a traditional system.
Customers are usually willing to share the downside of the solutions they’ve chosen, as well as the upside.
Easy scalability
Make sure that the vendor you choose knows exactly how you will need to scale the system for your
specific needs. For instance, if your organization often grows and shrinks during different times of the
year or in some other cyclical manner, ask how new users would be added to support your growth
needs. Will new hardware need to be added and removed each time you grow and shrink? Or will the
system support your needs up to a certain point, regardless of how many times you change size?
Multi-vendor interoperability
Some vendors are known for requiring a full infrastructure overhaul to accommodate the new IP
telephony system. Be certain that you can use your existing network equipment with the new
solution, and make sure that when you add new gear, you can do so without needing to consider the
IP telephony system. IP telephony is only beneficial if it’s truly part of the network and it doesn’t bring
you new headaches or worries further down the line.
Full suite of communications features & business-enabling applications

Cost savings, as discussed in chapter one, are not simply a result of toll charge avoidance. Most cost savings
come from the additional features that you get with an IP telephony system. Will the system provide value-
added services like call history logging, conference call capabilities, document sharing, follow-me features,
etc.? Compare the checklist of capabilities of each system. This is not to say you should simply compare how
many features, but rather decide on which ones are most important to your organization and come up with
the vendors that meet the majority of your requirements. A simple ranking system for each system offering
should work well (see Figures 2.1 and 2.2 for an example using a 1-10 rating system).
Ease of implementation/management/maintenance
IP telephony systems should make life easier for the IT team, not more difficult. Because the new
system works on the existing network, everything is managed similarly. If management of the

IP telephony solution is not straightforward and intuitive, how long will it take your team to ramp up to the
point that the system will be supported adequately? It’s imperative that changes be made quickly and easily
so that the addition of a new system doesn’t add burden to busy IT personnel. Some of the most important
factors of convergence are how it simplifies life and how it saves organizations in terms of management time
and money. Does your staff need to train with the vendor every month, and can you afford their time out of
the office? How difficult is it to train users on features of the system, and will they be calling for help more
often than usual because of the IP telephony implementation? In reality, users should be calling your help
desk less frequently with a new IP telephony system. Even employee moves, adds, and changes (MACs)
should be simple for either the user or one IT staff member to make within a few minutes. You should also
no longer need a service provider to make these alterations for you—this will save you money and time.
Efficient, integrated multi-site networking

You will want to make sure that architecturally, your solution is built around a distributed design. A central-
ized solution that distributes applications over the network to other sites is inefficient as far as consuming
capacity on the WAN. If a vendor is proposing a centralized approach and suggests “simply adding band-
width” as the way around reliability issues, remember that bandwidth costs are not insignificant and insist
on a solution that is designed for optimal bandwidth utilization. Multi-site organizations inherently require a
distributed, as opposed to centralized, solution.
Favorable overall cost and payback interval

You can use information from Nemertes Research “Convergence & Next-Generation WAN Technologies”
report to compare total cost of ownership data for the four leading vendors (Avaya, Cisco, Nortel, and
ShoreTel). Nemertes Research analyzed these vendors in specific areas, including total hardware costs,
network upgrades, IP handsets, management tools, and conferencing/collaborative applications, calculating
the total cost of ownership (TCO) by vendor solution (see Figure 2.3).
Total Cost of Ownership per

User-IP Telephony Systems
$4,000
Dollars per User
$3,500
$3,000
$2,500
$2,000
$3,384
$3,365
$1,500
$2,537
$1,970
$1,000
$1,127
$1,384
$1,223
$865
$500
0.00
< 1,000 units/station > 1,000 units/station
Figure 2.3 Total Cost per User Source: Nemertes Research

Last but Not Least: Ease of Use
Another factor you’ll want to consider carefully is ease of use for end users. While you will undoubtedly need
to familiarize employees with the system, training should not be cumbersome or lengthy. The IP phones and
call control software should be intuitive and easier to use than the analog phones being replaced. Features
like on-the-fly conference calling, drag-and-drop call transferring, and the forwarding of voice mail messages
via e-mail should be simple for employees, even those who cannot attend training and have to learn the
system on their own. You will likely have remote users logging in and using the system, and it will be difficult,
if possible at all, to get those people to a training session. In these instances, you’ll appreciate a solution that
users can easily navigate so they come up to speed and begin capitalizing on features that enhance your
company’s employee productivity and customer service as soon as possible.
The Bottom Line

The most important things for you to remember during the evaluation process are the main business drivers
of convergence. Make sure the vendor you choose is committed to making these perceived benefits a reality
for your organization:
• Lowering total operating costs

• Enhancing end-user productivity
• Improving IT organization efficiency
• Reinforcing market differentiation and brand image
The next chapter will explore the IP telephony implementation from beginning to end, starting with research
and vendor evaluation and ending with the actual deployment, and will include a helpful timeline for you to
use.

Planning:
The Implementation Calendar 3
Chapter 3
TABLE OF CONTENTS
This chapter provides you with a high-level timeline for
the implementation, from research to actual deployment.
Planning: The
Implementation Calendar 3
Chapter 3
12 Months to Deployment: Read, Learn, and Ask 1
10 Months to Deployment: Head for the Internet 2
9 Months to Deployment: Call in the Vendors 2
8 Months to Deployment: Demonstration and Trial Period 3
Crucial Tasks - Do Not Skip 3
7 Months to Deployment: Do an Inventory 3
6 Months to Deployment: Request Vendor Proposals 3
5 Months to Deployment: Choose Vendor 4
4 Months to Deployment: Gauge your Network's Readiness 4
1 Month to Deployment: Pilot Installation and Testing 5
0 Days to Deployment: Go Live 5
The Bottom Line 6

Roadmap to IP Telephony*
12 Months Read, Learn, and Ask (read about the technology, ask experts)
10 Months Head for the Internet (scour vendor websites)
9 Months Call in the Vendors
8 Months Demonstration and Trial Period
7 Months Do an Inventory
6 Months Request Vendor Proposals
5 Months Choose Vendor
4 Months Gauge your Network’s Readiness
1 Month Pilot Installation and Testing
0 Days Go Live
*This schedule can be accelerated to fit needs. For instance, if your organization decides to
move locations and the timing is right to implement IP telephony, this schedule can be
altered to fit a three month schedule.
The Road to IP Telephony

12 Months to Deployment: Read, Learn, and Ask
The first step is research. The fact that you’ve reached this chapter in the book indicates you are fairly
certain about deploying IP telephony at least sometime in the future, if not the near future. It is best to
be making that decision about 12 months before you want to deploy a new phone system, IP telephony or
otherwise. At this time, you’ll want to get your hands on as much unbiased research and as many
reports from reputable consultancies as possible. Read the research with the goal being to decide if IP
telephony is right for you. For now, pass up reports that talk about vendors, and get your hands instead
on technology articles, technical papers, industry event presentations given by independent
technologists or long-term experts, etc.
The following resources can be helpful in your search for IP telephony information.
• CIO Magazine (www.cio.com)
• Network Computing (http://www.networkcomputing.com)
• Network World (www.networkworld.com)
• VoIP Magazine (www.voip-magazine.com)
• ComputerWorld (www.computerworld.com)
Trade magazines and their online counterparts do cover vendors, of course, but you can find unbiased
technology primers and overviews. It’s also helpful to read customer case studies about deployments to
learn about the experiences of those companies that have deployed IP telephony. Read case studies for
technology tips first, vendor specifics second.
| Chapter 3 | Planning: The Implementation Calendar

After you’ve searched on the Internet and leafed through your stack of technology publications, invest in
some time with industry experts and analysts. For lengthy conversations, you may have to invest more
than time—research analysts can be hired on a project basis to provide you with valuable information and
insights. But be sure to keep a keen ear out for biases because often analysts are paid consultants for
specific vendors and because they know the vendor, they’ll tend to reference them more often than others.
Keep your questions, at this point, in reference to the technology. Learn all you can from these experts
about organizations like your own that have deployed IP telephony, what their specific challenges were,
and what the results have been.
10 Months to Deployment: Head for the Internet

After you’ve completed your technology research, visit the web sites of the vendors you’ve heard about.
Read about offerings from the industry leaders Avaya, Cisco, Nortel and ShoreTel. Learn about smaller
companies and what the benefits and drawbacks to their systems are. It’s recommended to take and keep
good notes so that by the time you’re looking at the eighth vendor and you’ve forgotten which solutions do
what, you’ll have detailed notes to refer back to. This is where you want to establish a long list and then
whittle it down to a short list.
You’ll read about each solution with your own organization in mind. Jot down questions as you click
through vendor web pages. You may get the answer to the question quickly, or it may remain on your list
until you eventually meet with the vendor. If your organization has many offices across the United States,
for instance, look at solution descriptions with scalability, flexibility, and ease of deployment mentioned
early. If your organization rarely changes in size and has a limited number of telephony requirements, look
for solutions that offer the basics at a very affordable price point.
Next, create a checklist or table with some common features. For instance, most IP telephony solutions
offer standard features like caller ID and three- or four-digit dialing. As you exhaust the common feature
list, start adding unique features that matter to your organization. Learn (or try to learn) what differenti-
ates each vendor you’re considering. If you save the differentiation for the vendor presentation, you likely
will get a skewed answer to the question, “What makes your solution different and superior?” This checklist
is just the beginning and you won’t do anything with it until the RFP phase.
Read articles about each vendor and mark items off your checklist as you determine what each offers. Start
with articles that the vendor links to (usually found under headings like “press coverage,” “news coverage,”
“case studies,” “success stories,” and “customer solutions” on the website). However, vendors obviously
will only highlight their true success stories. Use an Internet search engine to do a little sleuthing your-
self—you may find three or four stories about users’ unhappiness with a certain vendor. Dig for the dirt.
Use all of this information for your checklist and research notes.
9 Months to Deployment: Call in the Vendors

After you’ve looked at your checklist and decided three or four vendors probably offer the best solutions
for your organization, invite each of them to come in and give you an overview of their solutions and a
demonstration if possible. You will hear a sales pitch, of course, but you may also hear features you hadn’t
learned about, or you may hear the names of customer references that have organizational needs like
yours. Whenever a sales person drops a customer name, ask for the contact person to speak with after the
vendor presentation. If you are told the customer cannot be a reference, (which is understandable—many

companies will not speak as a customer reference by policy), ask for a similar customer that you can
speak with. If your organization is a bank with 23 branch offices, ask to speak with a similarly sized bank
reference. If the vendor is not able to give you even one customer reference right away, take note and
be cautious.
8 Months to Deployment: Demonstration and Trial Period

After you’ve seen each vendor’s presentation (and possibly after you’ve spoken with customer refer-
ences), inquire about an onsite demonstration and also a trial period. Some vendors, after they’ve
shown you how their system works, are willing to deploy a sample set-up so you can test the solution in
your office. Some vendors give you just a few days or a week. Often, as the trial period nears the end,
you can easily get an extension just by asking. A reputable vendor does not put a deadline on your
decision. They want you to be happy with your choice of their solution; an extended trial period is not a
huge cost to them.
Crucial Tasks - Do Not Skip

• Talk to multiple customer references: insist on recent customers as well as success stories.
• Get each vendor to bring an RFP into your office, in person, to discuss details.
• Talk to colleagues at other organizations that have deployed VoIP (beyond vendor references).
• When you’re close to choosing vendor, obtain equipment for a trial period.
7 Months to Deployment: Do an Inventory

Assessing your current network is crucial to a successful IP telephony deployment. There are a
number of things to keep in mind and questions you’ll want to answer about the organization’s
telephone usage. The following checklist will help ensure you think of everything.
1. Determine your business requirements. How will the system be used? How many calls per month
(or day) are made out of your office? Are those calls to customers or internal employees? How
many offices will you have on a system? Are there remote offices to consider?
2. Look at your LAN. What equipment are you using? Do you have an up-to-date network diagram?
Is the equipment current or outdated? Are you using Virtual LANs (VLANs) for security or perfor-
mance issues? VLANs improve voice quality by prioritizing voice traffic.
3. Assess your WAN. How much WAN bandwidth do you have between offices? How many home or
remote offices do you have and will you need dedicated circuits or will DSL suffice? Consider
whether managed IP services are a fit for your organization as an alternative to traditional dedicated
circuits.
6 Months to Deployment: Request Vendor Proposals

If you work with a network integration partner or consultancy, you may want to call on them to help you
with the Request for Proposal (RFP). You may also request a sample RFP from any of the vendors you’ll
be evaluating, but make sure the one you use is comprehensive and not skewed toward any one vendor. If
you decide to write the RFP yourself, chapter 2 of this book includes an outline on how to go about it.

The next step, after issuing the RFP is to closely review the proposals from each vendor. It will be helpful to
use a weighted ranking system to score each vendor based on your long list of requirements. Again, see
chapter 2 for ideas about creating these checklists and spreadsheets. After you’ve narrowed down the
vendors to a short list, ask to see a demo and request a sample set-up to test the solution in your office.
Most vendors will give you a free trial period so you can get more comfortable with the system.
Once you’ve collected all of the information and carefully evaluated your short list of vendors, think care-
fully about your organization’s priorities in general and start talking to customers. Be sure you get customer
references that have similar networks and similar business requirements to your own organization. Again,
ask to speak with recent customers: It’s easy to give you a list of happy customers. Ask for a list of the most
recent customers signed on—within the last three months, for instance—and call them about their experience.
5 Months to Deployment: Choose Vendor

After you’ve taken all these steps, created a feature checklist, and determined which vendor best meets
your feature/functionality requirements, you should be ready to make the decision. Be sure and ask any
remaining questions before you indicate that you are leaning towards that vendor. It is very important to
review the vendor’s website, including where they post press releases. If there have been any recent
upgrades or new product announcements, ask how customers are responding and call customer references
again. This will give you the freshest input, and you’ll be able to make the most educated decision on the right
vendor for you.
4 Months to Deployment: Gauge your Network’s Readiness

By testing your data network’s ability to successfully support IP telephony traffic and discovering potential
performance problems before your system is installed, a network assessment helps you plan, design and
implement a successful IP telephony solution. The assessment can be administered by the solutions partner
or by the vendor you choose, since both have a wealth of experience with IP telephony that they apply to
interpreting the test results. Regardless if you use the solutions partner or the chosen vendor, an expert
voice readiness assessment is required prior to installing a new IP telephony system across multiple sites.
In order to achieve toll-quality voice, you need to deploy IP telephony over a properly architected
network infrastructure - i.e., it has to provide sufficient throughput and meet latency, jitter and packet
loss requirements.
Throughput: How much bandwidth you need depends on the how many simultaneous calls your organiza-
tion has going on, the voice encoding scheme used in the IP handset or soft phone, and the signaling
overhead.
Latency and Jitter: Latency is the time it takes for a caller’s voice to be transported (packetized, sent
over the network, de-packetized, replayed) to the other individual. Distance and lower-speed circuits can
cause delay. Latency that’s too high interrupts the natural conversation flow (you may have spoken with
someone using VoIP - you think they have stopped talking but they haven’t-that’s latency). Latency cannot
exceed 100 milliseconds one way for toll-quality voice. Acceptable quality voice can go up to 150 millisec-
onds and participants can still carry on a decent conversation.

Packet Loss: Packet loss results in a metallic sound or conversation dropouts. It’s caused by conges-
tion, distance and poor line quality. Because IP telephony is a real-time audio service using Real Time
Protocol (RTP) running over User Datagram Protocol (UDP), there’s no way to recover lost packets. A
mere one or two percent packet drop degrades voice quality.
A thorough assessment uses active application traffic across the LAN and WAN in order to reveal what’s
going to happen when IP telephony is introduced into the mix. Test agents send a variety of network
traffic packets - using different application protocols, packet size, packet spacing and quality of service
(QoS) levels. The tests simulate the various types of IP telephony traffic that are likely to occur on a
live network. In addition to measuring peer-to-peer traffic, the agents can also generate real-time client
transactions against production servers, including communication with IP PBX servers. This compre-
hensive approach enables the test engineer to pinpoint the source of potential problems and make
recommendations for resolution, thus avoiding unwelcome surprises following the implementation.
1 Month to Deployment: Pilot Installation and Testing

If you have an integration partner or the vendor you have selected works with regional resellers and
consultants, call and schedule a time to determine your needs list. If your organization or the vendor
does not have an integration partner, get an engineer from the vendor in to help you with this list. With
this person (or people), look closely at the current design of your network and make a list of any
equipment upgrades or new purchases you’ll need to make in order to optimize the infrastructure for
IP telephony.
Update any existing network diagrams you’ll be using. Be sure to label it so you know it is the original
(pre-IP telephony). Next, sketch your new network diagram with the gear included. Determine if there
is any overlap and if perhaps you don’t need as many switches as you thought. If you’re not working
with an integration partner, you may want to invest some money in having a technology expert take a
look at your new proposed network diagram. It’s better to make major changes in the planning stage as
opposed to after you’ve taken delivery of your IP telephony equipment. An expert can also make sure
you maximize your equipment purchase and may make modifications to your diagram that will save you
money in the long run.
After you’ve come up with your new network diagram, begin deploying the gear onto a test network.
This will not only help ensure the new system works optimally, it will help you get accustomed to the
new equipment so other deployments (to other locations, for instance) go smoothly. At the beginning,
the test network should not affect anybody’s workday. During the second phase, transition some non-
critical employees or departments to the test network. This will help you further test the system in a
real-world scenario and also gets users familiar with it.
0 Days to Deployment: Go Live

After you have played with the system for a few weeks or months and made appropriate configuration
changes to adapt to your entire organization, begin rolling out IP telephony company wide. An installa-
tion in phases tends to work best, even if the phases are over one week. The larger your enterprise, the
longer it will take and the longer you may need between phases.

After the rollout, it’s imperative that you schedule end user training. You may handle this by department or
location, depending on your organization. Vendor representatives are often available to be onsite to provide
expertise and demonstrations during end user training sessions. While your choice of solutions will likely be
rich in features, these features should also be intuitive to the end user; therefore training should take just
two or three hours, as opposed to all day.
Make sure that the team you’ve put together is available for the duration (right through user training), at
least on some level. If you’ve chosen a project leader, this is the person who will know all the details, even if
he or she is not working daily on all of them. Once you’ve made the switch, so to speak, sit back and start
enjoying the benefits of IP telephony.
The Bottom Line

You want to take your time implement IP telephony. A year may seem like a long time, but the more time
you invest up front, the less money you’re likely to waste overall. However, if you do not have a full year,
this schedule can absolutely be accelerated—but do not skip steps, just shorten each cycle to fit your
needs. The next chapter will go into more detail about reliability and what’s required in order to ensure
maximum uptime. Topics to be covered include redundancy, mean time to repair (MTTR), mean time
between failures (MTBF), and network and applications reliability.

Ensuring Reliability
in IP Telephony 4
Chapter 4
TABLE OF CONTENTS
This chapter covers varying IP telephony solution architectures, mean time
between failure, mean time to repair, network reliability, and application reliability.
Ensuring Reliability
in IP Telephony 4
Chapter 4
How is Reliability Different from Availability?
Distributed vs. Centralized, Chassis vs. Modular
The Bathtub Curve 3
Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) 3
Moving Parts and Complexity 4
N+ Redundancy and No Single Point of Failure 4
Network Reliability
Application Reliability
The Bottom Line
ii
The most crucial characteristic of a business phone system is reliability. You must pick up the phone to
a dial tone, you must be able to successfully place outgoing calls, and calls must effectively reach your
organization. This chapter covers varying IP telephony solution architectures, mean time between
failure, mean time to repair, network reliability, and application reliability. It is meant to help you dig
deeper into the solutions you’ve narrowed down to your short list so that you can choose the one that
fits best into your organization and existing infrastructure and provide you with maximum uptime.
How is Reliability Different from Availability?

Usually when reliability is mentioned in terms of a voice system, the reference is generally about
hardware. Without hardware reliability, the system cannot be reliable. Reliability is determined by
calculating how often the system fails compared to the percentage of time the system is available. In
the telephony world, “five-nines” reliability is the acceptable benchmark. This means the system is
available at least 99.999 percent of the time.
Availability, on the other hand, is predicted based on the probability of a hardware component failure. It
is predicted by taking into account the type and number of hardware components in a system and
calculating the mean time between failure (MTBF). So, if an IP switch has a predicted MTBF of ap-
proximately 135,600 hours, and each failure requires one (1) hour of mean time to repair (MTTR), we
would use this simple computation to estimate the availability:
Availability = MTBF = 135,600 = 99.9993%

MTBF + MTTR 135,600 + 1
This demonstrates that this particular unit will achieve “five-nines of availability.” Alternatively, this
switch is predicted to be unavailable for one hour every 10 years.
Let’s take a household example. Consider a toaster that works for a year (an average year is 365.2425
days = 8,765.82 hours or 8,766 hours), and then it breaks, so you have to replace it: MTBF = one year.
You take it to the store for a replacement the next day: MTTR = 24 (one day).
Availability = MTBF = 8.766 hours = 99.7%

MTBF + MTTR 8.766 hours + 24 hours
This indicates two-nines availability. However, if you keep an extra toaster on hand, MTTR could be as
little as fifteen minutes (.25 hours). While this increases the cost of equipment, it also increases the
availability fairly significantly.
Availability = 8.766 hours = 99.997% or four-nines of availability

8.766 hours + .25 hours
| Chapter 4 | Ensuring Reliability in IP Telephony

Back to industry terms, there is no ordinary telephone system that can achieve five-nines. Since state-of-
the-art MTBF for systems is 100,000 hours and MTTR is 24 hours, you would need to deliver 2,400,000
hours between failures to achieve five-nines.
Availability = MTBF = 2, 400.000

MTBF + 24 2,400,000 + 24
Even repairing the problem in 4 hours doesn’t make it much easier to accomplish:
99.9990% = 400,000
400,000 + 4
You would still need 400,000 hours between failures. These examples are far beyond state-of-the-art. The
way to meet these demands is via redundancy. Read on for a section on redundancy and specifically n+1
redundancy.
Distributed vs. Centralized, Chassis vs. Modular

IP telephony systems differ in their architectures: Some are centralized while others are distributed. In a
centralized setup, the centralized call control server provides dial tone for all phones, whereas a distributed
model is one where end points are handled by multiple call control servers. In this solution, call control is
provided by each switch in the system. See figure 4.1.
Call Control Call Control Call Control Call Control
Centralized Call Control Distributed Call Control
Figure 4.1. Centralized vs. Distributed Call Control
A classic chassis includes a number of circuit boards, with most of them providing telephony interfaces and
one consisting of a specialized computer system, while some modular units contain a single board. The
classic chassis can be compared to a string of holiday lights: If one bulb fails, the entire segment fails. The
more lights on the string (number of circuit boards in the chassis), the more vulnerable it becomes to
failures.
A typical chassis model, because you have to take into consideration the reliability of their components,
typically has an MTBF in the 50,000 range, which is four (not five) nines availability. This can be raised to
five-nines by adding switches for redundancy (costly but effective). More on this will be discussed in the
n+1 redundancy section later.

In contrast, a modular architecture includes small, simple and reliable hardware. This modularity is
more reliable and also offers more freedom in the design stages of an IP telephony implementation.
Look at both modular and chassis-based systems, but keep in mind your specific reliability needs and
remember that modular systems generally make configuration changes simpler and seamless.
The Bathtub Curve

Electronic product failures historically demonstrate a failure profile known as a “bathtub curve.” See
Figure 4.2 for a depiction of the bathtub curve. Because of a number of reasons, including stress,
electronics tend to have a short life before they start failing. At the beginning of the lifecycle (the left
side of the diagram), manufacturing defects, defective parts, contamination and other factors cause
failures, before these settle to a much lower level (the middle of the diagram). The other end (on the
right) signifies the end of life or wearing out of the product.
The Bathtub Curve

Hypothetical Failure Rate versus Time
Increased Failure Rate
Infant Mortality End of Life Wear-Out

Decereasing Failure Rate Increasing Failure Rate
Normal Life (Useful Life)

Low "Constant" Failure Rate
Time
Figure 4.2 The Bathtub Curve
Be sure and ask vendors about their failure rates and how long a product lasts before end of life. If a
vendor does not give you a concrete number based on scientific calculations (not marketing hype), ask
more questions or talk to someone at the organization who can give you that information.
Mean Time To Repair (MTTR)

When a product is down, the entire system’s availability percentage is dramatically affected. Consider
the following example, where MTTR goes from 1 to 24 hours.
Long Repair Times Slash Availability Ratings
MTBF = 3,00 hours

Availability = MTBF/(MTBF+MTTR)
Availability with -hour MTTR = 3,00/(3,00+) = 99.9993%
Availability with 4-hour MTTR = 3,00/(3,00+4) = 99.9789%
Figure 4.3 Comparing MTBF with varying MTTR

The more complex an IP telephone system, the longer it’s going to take to identify what’s going wrong
during a failure. Only when you’ve identified what’s wrong can you get a replacement for it, which can take
even more time, and then there is the time it takes to get the system back up and running. Because of this,
chassis systems described earlier in this chapter require personnel with significantly more expertise to
ensure the system remains functional.
A 4-hour MTTR is industry standard, which creates a problem for IP vendors that want to maintain five-
nines of availability with a 4-hour MTTR. Redundant systems are usually added to ensure this availability
because a 4-hour MTTR requires a 400,000-hour MTBF to achieve 99.999% availability. (Availability =
MTBF/(MTBF+MTTR) = 400,000/(400,000+4) = 99.999%.) Modular, distributed systems tend to make
system repair easy, which results in a lower MTTR. These systems only require one power source and two
or three cable connections.
Moving Parts and Complexity

Another thing to keep in mind is the number of moving parts there are in a system. For instance, adding a
disc drive (rather than flash memory) with a 500,000-hour MTBF cuts the system’s overall MTBF in half.
Moving parts are also likelier to wear out faster than non-moving parts. For instance, the bathtub curve for
disc drives is steep and it’s often recommended they be replaced well before end of life to avoid failure. In
the case of an IP telephony solution, you’d be replacing a disc drive during the time you have it on your
network, since most disc drives last five years. Ask each vendor how many moving parts there are in each
system. Again, insist on getting the information from another company source if the sales team does not
have this information readily available.
Redundancy also impacts the failure rate, ironically. While vendors often add redundant parts, such as disc
drives and power supplies, to their systems, the very fact that the number of parts are being doubled in
itself can increase the chance that the system will fail (increase the MTBF). When you are considering an
IP PBX system for your organization, be sure to look at how complex each system is. The more complex,
the longer it takes to repair because problem diagnosis, part replacement, and system restoration can be
difficult. Look for modular systems that are easy to manage and troubleshoot, with specific built-in tools to
ensure quick and easy diagnosis and repair.
N+1 Redundancy and No Single Point of Failure

Look for a solution with a distributed architecture that allows for the use of n+1 redundancy, which means
that extra parts—as opposed to entire units—can be added to provide redundancy. Some vendors have 1:1
redundancy, which means twice the hardware is used to accomplish redundancy. Other systems use n+1
redundancy—which improves reliability since it is not doubling the hardware. For instance, the n+1 redun-
dancy solution may need two extra units (where parts to the IP telephony system are duplicated within the
two units), while a 1:1 redundancy solution needs five extra units because each unit is duplicated in its
entirety. Essentially, using n+1 redundancy creates a multi-unit system with no single point of failure.
In addition to a distributed architecture that provides n+1 redundancy, look for a solution that intercon-
nects each module using IP rather than cards in box slots. This design uses the Internet as a bus rather
than having a proprietary backplane, which allows you to use a wide variety of chips and software and also
reduces the costs and increases speed because of the use of IP and Ethernet. This design also allows you to
seamlessly scale your system to meet organizational growth demands, just as the Internet allows for growth.
Finally, look for a system that provides most of its feature upgrades via software so that there is minimal
time between the release and your organization’s use of these features.

T-1
Principal: N+1 Redundancy T-1
T-1
T-1
Instead of duplicating entire hardware, modularize T-1
into "N" modules, and add 1 more T-1
T-1
T-1
Example: 600 user System T-1
T-1
120/24
120/24
120/24
120/24
120/24
+1 TheGear T-1 T-1
+1 TheGear T-1 T-1
TheGear T-1 TheGear T-1 T-1
8 8
TheGear 120/24 TheGear 120/24 120/24
5 TheGear 120/24 5 TheGear 120/24 120/24
TheGear 120/24 TheGear 120/24 120/24
TheGear 120/24 TheGear 120/24 120/24
TheGear 120/24 TheGear 120/24 120/24
600-User System 600-User System with 600-User System with
n+1 Redundancy 1+1 Redundancy
Availability of N+1 system = 99.9 999 999 92%, that's "10-nines" or 4 million years
Using a spare gives n+1 availability, increasing

availability far beyond 5-nines
The goal of five-nines reliability is impossible for most systems because redundancy requirements can
be complex and expensive. Using n+1 redundancy is not only more cost-effective, but it is less complex,
which in turn reduces the chance of failure.
Network Reliability
The biggest hurdle when implementing an IP telephony solution is ensuring it works properly with the
existing underlying infrastructure. LANs and WANs have lower reliability than telecommunications
systems and are prone to quality-of-service (QoS) issues that make IP telephony solutions unreliable.
LANs have multiple serial components, which negatively affects the reliability (typical LANs achieve
three to four nines of availability), but it is possible to achieve five-nines availability on a network by
using a redundant aggregation switch with redundant paths. After all, four-nines reliability translates to
two hours of downtime per year. Can your organization afford that? Most 24/7 operations cannot. Focus
on solutions that allow these redundant paths to an aggregation switch.

WANs cause the biggest headache because WAN links are generally available only 99% to 99.9% of the time,
and voice quality availability can be as low as 98%. If your employees depend on superior voice quality for
their many conference calls, for example, this is going to be a problem. Some solutions exist that distribute
call control to local switches, which means that if a WAN link goes down, a remote switch can handle the
calls because call control, business logic and system database information are all available within that
switch.
A system with centralized call control relies heavily on its WAN connection because when it goes down,
remote sites have no call control, which means calls cannot be made unless a backup system is in place.
Look for a distributed solution that provides full and seamless call control functionality even during a WAN
failure.
Application Reliability
In addition to ensuring your system is reliable in terms of hardware, you must also ensure that IP telephony
system applications, including auto-attendants, voice mail, and desktop integration, work all the time for
your employees. Look at systems that offer one application server for a full range of applications. You can
use more than one server depending on your organization size, but make sure that it is not one feature per
server, like some solutions may force you to do. A truly reliable system, in terms of applications, uses a site
hierarchy, which means the first application in a user’s hierarchy is used, and each application server has
access to the configuration database in a central server. This design is highly reliable because each applica-
tion server caches the configuration database, making information and applications available even during
network downtime. For example, in the case of a network outage, remote users with their own server are
unaffected by a failure in another server so that individual sites can serve features like auto-attendant.
The Bottom Line

There is always the possibility that a system can be completely unreachable because of multiple LAN and
WAN problems (remember the saying, “never say never”). Look for solutions that allow you to build into
your system a backup plan, such as the ability to implement failover trunks, switch failover, and copper
bypass for emergency service. There are lots of vendors out there offering piecemeal solutions that could
leave you dealing with increased complexity and decreased reliability. A distributed architecture is a good
fit for multi-site organizations, and n+1 redundancy designs will keep your costs—and your chances of
failure—way down. The next chapter will go over system handsets, including analog and IP telephones as
well as hard and “soft” phones.

Handsets and
Interfaces 5
Chapter 5
TABLE OF CONTENTS
This chapter outlines the many benefits of todays' well-designed
and highly functional telephones.
Handsets and
Interfaces 5
Chapter 5
The Need 1
Ergonomics 1
Sound 1
Screen Interface 2
User Considerations 2
Keypad Functionality 3
Soft Keys 3
Business vs. Basic Phones 3
Aesthetics 4
Phone Choices 4
Analog phones 4
IP phones 4
Soft phones 4
WiFi phones 5
Want a SIP? 5
American Disabilities Act (ADA) Compliance 5
The Bottom Line 6
ii
Think about your home telephone, your cell phone, or any one of the multiple electronic devices you
use everyday. You expect—and appreciate—a well-designed product. You shop for these items with
design and functionality in mind. With IP telephony, you can now bring the same high expectations into
the office and into your search for handsets. Mediocre office telephones are a thing of the past because
IP telephone handsets introduce so many more features and benefits.
The Need
Business workers rely on the telephone many hours out of the day, from collaborating with business
partners and co-workers to interacting with and helping customers and suppliers. Call center profes-
sionals literally spend the entire day on their telephones. It’s not enough to “make do” with a standard,
feature-lacking desktop handset. To make employees more productive—and happier—you need to
provide them with the tools they need to do their jobs optimally. You’ll only do this when you present
them with a handset that is ergonomically well-designed, has great sound quality, and features a multi-
tude of capabilities at the touch of a button.
Ergonomics
Ergonomics is the science of designing products, machines and systems to maximize the safety, comfort
and efficiency of the people who use them. Ergonomics takes into account psychology, physical mea-
surement, environment, and more to ensure that products are adapted to suit workers and their spe-
cific needs. Keep ergonomics in mind as you look at the handsets and graphical user interfaces (GUIs)
of each vendor’s solutions. If your organization is a machine shop, the most important feature for your
handsets may be a very loud ringer. If you have a call center staff, a bevy of features that help shorten
the call cycle will be most beneficial. A law firm may require a system that logs incoming and outgoing
calls and keeps this information on record for future reference. A recording studio may require ultra-
clear sound quality to ensure recorded voices are pitch-perfect. Look at your organizational needs in
terms of what you need a handset and GUI to do for your employees.
Sound
IP telephony, with its packet-based design, is able to deliver better than toll-quality sound with hi-
fidelity audio and innovative design. Better sound translates into productivity gains – shorter calls with
fewer errors, increased sales because of the clarity of conversation between a sales person and custom-
er, and increased caller satisfaction. Wideband audio is preferable over narrowband, because it has an
increased range on the low end (50-300 Hz) and makes conversations sound less tinny and reduces
error in translation. Look for a solution that supports both wideband and narrowband.
| Chapter 5 | Handsets and Interfaces

$0 $50 $100 $150 $200 $250 $300
WIDE BAND (50 - 7000)
NARROW BAND (300 - 3400)
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000
FREQUENCY RANGE (Hz)
Figure 5.1 Wideband audio technology provides bandwidth from 50Hz to 7,000 Hz; narrowband provides 300 Hz to
3,400 Hz. Wideband delivers superior speech quality.
Speakerphone microphones are also an important part of sound quality consideration. Look for a solution
that supports hi-fidelity sound and has a full-duplex operation speakerphone so audio flows freely on both
ends (no delay if one speaker talks over another). Not all IP speakerphones are able to do this. In addition,
ensure you choose a handset that meets the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations for the
hearing impaired, regardless of whether you have an immediate need or not. (More on ADA compliance will
be covered later in this chapter.)
Screen Interface
IP telephones act more like computers than telephones—they have a bigger screen and more functionality
attached to the screen. This screen also delivers more information about each call and prompts the user
through the call with various options appearing on the screen. The user simply presses a corresponding key
below the screen to accomplish any task while on the call (call forward, conference, etc.).
Make sure to consider carefully the size of the screen, with your users in mind. Is it big enough that after a
long day of work, it’s still pleasing to the eye? Is the display big and bright enough to see clearly after four
hours on the phone? In addition, work with the phone and test what features are available and how easy
those features are to access for a call center worker taking up to 50 calls an hour. Is there a message waiting
light to ensure no message is missed?
User Considerations
Another characteristic to consider is the feel of the phone, since that is another source of fatigue for users.
The phone should minimize shoulder and neck pain and fatigue, and it should essentially fit most users
comfortably. The handset should not be too light or too heavy—try and get a phone with a balanced weight
of about 170-190 grams. Also, consider a handset with a grip that is covered with a smooth rubber material,
as opposed to the slippery plastic kind that can become uncomfortable during long telephone calls.

Keypad Functionality
Many systems will come with fixed-feature keys. Make sure those features are the one most pertinent to
the needs of your employees. Fixed features usually include transfer, conference, intercom, voice mail
dialup, directory, and redial. If a system relies mostly on soft keys, consider how difficult it may be for
all your users to get those soft keys set up and working. Will you end up having to go around to every
employee’s phone to program two or three soft key functions? Soft keys are beneficial to have, but they
should not be used for standard functions—these should be on hard keys. Some functions that you
should look for on fixed-feature keys include:
• Directory: This key should be linked to a quick-dial program that allows a caller to dial by name
using the telephone keypad (7 for S, 2 for A, 6 for M, which would bring up names that match
beginning letters “SAM”).
• Redial: This function key should do more than simply dial the last number dialed—it should allow
you to press it and see an historical list of outbound, inbound and missed calls.
• Personal options: This feature key should allow for easy management of personal options, such as
ring tone and call handling preferences.
• Voice mail: This key should provide quick and easy access to voice mail messages.
Soft Keys
Soft keys are multi-function keys that use part of the telephone display to identify their function at any
moment. They are usually located directly underneath the display and their use changes depending on
where the user is in the call process. You can set some soft keys for use by all of your employees, and
you can choose to leave some to the discretion of each user. Make sure the setup of soft keys is straight-
forward before allowing users to set up their own. If the IP telephony system you’ve chosen does not
offer handset soft keys that are easy to set up or change, make sure the solution allows you to either set
the soft keys for each user (or block users from trying to set up their own) or the ability to choose not
to use the soft keys at all. This will minimize user confusion and frustration if the solution is difficult to
edit.
Business vs. Basic Phones

Basic phones differ greatly from business phones in that they offer few or no additional functions
beyond answering and hanging up. Business phones streamline tasks and offer users productivity
enhancing features. You’ll find that some vendors offer most functionality via soft keys, while others rely
on numerous hard keys—one function per key. Your employees may fare best with fixed function keys,
or classic business phones, which generally have a button per task. Some vendors do not offer this,
however, relying mostly on soft keys. Still other phones offer a fixed number of hard keys and some
extra hard keys that you can program to fit your organizational needs. These are optimal for organiza-
tions with workgroups that need specific functions to be programmed into keys.
Easy to Manage
You want to make sure the phones you are getting with the IP telephony system you choose are plug-
and-play, particularly if you have a large organization with many locations, some of which have no
technical staff on-hand for installation support. Non-technical employees should be able to plug in their
phone and start working. When it’s plugged in, the phone should automatically get its IP address,
subnet mask, and gateway, as well as the accurate time from a time server. Handset updates should be
equally as hands-off for employees—updates should be automatic as they are released by the vendor.

Aesthetics
While most businesses do not place emphasis on how a phone looks over the functionality, it is still an
important consideration. A phone that is pleasing to the eye is as impressive as a beautiful desk or sleek-
looking computer. Consider your options with your chosen vendor and ask about variety. What colors do
their phones come in? Are there smaller versions for users who need minimal functionality? Are there
ruggedized versions of the IP phones for public area usage? Look for a solution that will fit all your needs,
with phones that are consistent in appearance and look classy throughout your organization.
Phone Choices
In an IP telephony solution, the IP-PBX manages telephones throughout the enterprise and acts as a
gateway to both voice and data networks. Any kind of telephone, whether it be analog, IP or a soft phone,
can connect to the IP-PBX via the network and calls are routed via the network instead of the public
switched telephone network.
Analog phones
A regular analog telephone, the same ones you’ve been using throughout your organization until now, can
be used in an IP telephony solution to input the caller’s voice into the system. Once in the system, a series
of analog-to-digital conversions and other processes change the voice signals into data, which is then
transmitted over the LAN, WAN, or Internet. The voice data is then converted back into sound by the
recipient’s phone. Most IP telephony systems will allow you to use your existing analog telephones with the
solution—forever or until you are able to afford and/or replace them with IP telephones. Be sure that your
vendor will allow you to phase out older analog phones with their IP phones over time so you can maximize
your existing equipment.
IP phones
IP telephones (or IP endpoints) actually perform the analog-to-digital and/or digital-to-analog conversions
and can plug directly into the LAN or WAN. VoIP system vendors usually offer a variety of IP telephones so
that you can choose different models based on various segments in your user population. Your legal depart-
ment may need multi-line handsets with easy conference call capabilities. A manufacturing floor needs a
phone with fewer bells and whistles but good, loud sound and a rugged exterior. Receptionists need hand-
sets with many more fixed feature buttons so that they can handle calls quickly and accurately.
Soft phones
A soft phone is essentially software that is used to make calls over an IP telephony system using a personal
desktop computer and either a headset connected to the computer’s sound card, or a telephone connected
to the computer using an adapter. It behaves like a traditional phone but usually offers much more informa-
tion to the user, depending on the vendor’s GUI. When a call comes into a station with a softphone, an icon
appears on the computer screen, which allows the user to either answer it by clicking on an icon, or ignore
the call by clicking on another icon, which in turn sends the caller to either voice mail or another employee.
Often, vendors offer an application that allows traveling employees to gain access to the robust feature set
of their desktop computer from wherever they are working—at home or on the road. A user simply logs into
the system from the local phone and has access to all of the same functions he or she would enjoy while in
the office.

WiFi phones
WiFi phones use signals much like those used by cordless telephones. The WiFi phone receives signals
which allow you to wirelessly connect to the network via wireless access points (APs). Unlike tradition-
al cell phones, the technology of WiFi phones allows them to transmit data at really high speed, but
areas of coverage are limited by the reach of the AP being utilized. There are also hot spots available in
various locations (restaurants, Starbucks, libraries, etc.) that allow you to access the Internet using
your own WiFi service (or a service utilized by your organization).
One drawback to WiFi phones is the fact that some things can impede on the quality of the calls, such
as how many people are using the same hot spot, how close the WiFi phone user is to the access points,
WiFi card capabilities, and possible obstructions to the AP (such as a wall). Another drawback is that
WiFi technology does not offer the level of security offered with standard Internet access. More on
security will be covered in the following chapter.
Want a SIP?
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), a signaling protocol, is used for establishing a session in an IP net-
work—from a simple two-way telephone call to a multi-media conference call session with many partici-
pants. The IP telephony industry has recently adopted SIP, an RFC standard (RFC 3261) from the
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), as the protocol of choice for signaling because of its ability to
facilitate Internet applications by working with other protocols. It is not the be-all and end-all of proto-
cols—it was designed to be a facilitation mechanism, not an all-inclusive solution. Its flexibility is what
makes it so powerful, and an all-inclusive approach does not offer this level of flexibility.
Essentially, SIP establishes, manipulates and tears down sessions, and its main purpose is to help
session originators deliver invitations to potential session participants wherever they may be. It uses
URLs to address participants and SDP to convey session information and it’s easy to combine SIP with
other applications, like Web browsers and messaging. The bottom line is that it’s a modular approach to
maximizing IP telephony protocols. SIP can find and invite call invitees wherever they are. It facilitates
multi-media calls with many participants who may join and leave at will.
American Disabilities Act (ADA) Compliance

Your IP telephony system must comply with the American Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 and associ-
ated regulations issued by Federal agencies that define guidelines for accessibility by individuals with
disabilities. These guidelines include requirements for telephones and telephone systems, and they
include the “ADA Standard for Accessible Design” (Pt. 36, Appendix A, Section 4.31, Telephones) and
the 508 provision for TDD/TTYs. A few of these requirements include:
• Volume Control: Telephones should have volume controls that provide a gain adjustable up to a
minimum of 20 dB. The telephones should provide at least one intermediate step of 12 dB for
incremental volume control.
• Automatic Volume Reset: The telephone should automatically reset the volume to the default
level after every use.
• Hearing Aid Compatibility: The telephone must have a means for effective magnetic wireless
coupling to hearing technologies.
• Minimized Interference: Interference to hearing technologies, including hearing aids, cochlear
implants, and assistive listening devices, shall be reduced to the lowest possible level that allows a
user of hearing technologies to use the telephone.

• Support for TDD/TTYs: Products that transmit or conduct information or communication shall pass
through cross-manufacturer, non-proprietary, industry-standard codes, translation protocols, formats
or other information necessary to provide the information or communication in a usable format.
Technologies which use encoding, signal compression, format transformation, or similar techniques
shall not remove information needed for access or shall restore it upon delivery.
• Controls and Keys: Controls and keys shall be tactilely discernible without activating the controls or
keys. These controls and keys shall be operable with one hand and shall not require tight grasping,
pinching or twisting of the wrist. The force required to activate controls and keys shall be 5 lbs.
maximum. If key repeat is supported, the delay before repeat shall be adjustable to at least 2 seconds.
The status of all controls or keys should be visually discernible, and discernible either through touch
or sound.
• The cord from the telephone to the handset shall be at least 29 inches (735 mm) long.
• A wall-mounted object should not protrude into the walkway more than four inches to ensure visually
impaired individuals do not run into them.
The Bottom Line

By now, you have either chosen your IP telephony vendor or at least narrowed it down to a short list. Take
the telephone characteristics into account to help you finalize the decision. If you have already made your
choice, look carefully at all of the models your vendor offers and choose the right phone for each user in
your organization: Multi-function telephones for receptionists, soft phone licenses or WiFi phones for
travelers, basic but ruggedized phones for warehouses and manufacturing floors. At this stage in the IP
telephony game, you have more options than ever and you don’t need to make one model work for
everyone. What you do need to do is make sure your users are more productive because of the phones,
and that your choice complies with the ADA. The next chapter will cover how you can secure your IP tele-
phony communications.

Security
6
Chapter 6
TABLE OF CONTENTS
This chapter highlights the steps one should take to ensure

IP telephony traffic is secure against outsiders and
unauthorized individuals.
Security
6
Chapter 6
Evaluate your Risks 1

IP Telephony - Specific Considerations 1
Network-Based Attacks 1
Phone Service Theft 1
Eavesdropping 1
Power Failures 1
SPIT 2
Other Threats 2
Network Security Basics 2
IP Telephony Security Basics 2
IP Telephony System Security 3
How to Mitigate IP Telephony Vulnerabilities 4
The Bottom Line 4
ii
Anybody who’s connected to the Internet or who owns a PDA/multi-function cell phone knows that
they’re at risk of getting viruses, worms, spam and other malicious threats. In addition to the potential
damage these threats introduce in terms of lost data or corrupted files, there are now regulatory issues
associated with ensuring protection. Healthcare has its own privacy regulations in the form of HIPAA
(Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996), and infringements can result in signifi-
cant punishments and fines. The bottom line is that you have to protect your organization’s devices and
network. IP telephony is no different – the only difference is the form of the traffic: voice versus data.
All traffic crossing a network can be stolen, manipulated or blocked if proper network security precau-
tions are not put into place. This chapter will highlight the steps you should take to ensure your IP
telephony traffic is secure against outsiders and unauthorized individuals.
Evaluate your Risks

The first step to determining the right network security strategy (VoIP or otherwise) is to determine
the risks your particular organization faces. (Because of the increasingly complex network security
threats and solutions out there, you may want to get a network security expert on board to help with
the assessment.) For instance, a healthcare organization faces different regulatory requirements than a
legal or accounting firm. An e-commerce organization has altogether different privacy and security
requirements. Once you determine what your risks are, you’ll be better able to determine the best
multi-layer defense against attacks, eavesdropping, service theft and other evolving threats for the
entire network, including the IP telephony system being utilized.
IP Telephony - Specific Considerations

Network-Based Attacks. IP telephony is susceptible to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks because these
can cripple the network to the point that nothing, including voice calls, can get through. (It is generally
recommended that every organization using IP telephony have backup telephone lines in the case of an
out of control DoS attack or regional power failure.) Spam, spyware and phishing are other network
attacks that are commonly used to commit identity theft and other fraud. Finally, viruses and bots can
destroy data or devices or even hijack phones into a toll fraud scheme.
Phone Service Theft. A hacker could enter into an unprotected network and access the PBX to make
endless international calls. There have been major cases cited in the news where toll fraud has cost
companies millions of dollars. In many instances, the criminals have been caught and prosecuted, but
not without major costs to the companies defrauded; and keep in mind, there are always those crimes
that go undetected.
Eavesdropping. Without the proper security in place, a hacker could eavesdrop and possibly expose
confidential information. A private conversation about financials could be recorded and played for
anybody, which could lead to internal and external problems, including punishment from numerous
regulatory agencies. Or a personal call from an employee to a florist with a credit card number could
lead to credit card and even identity theft.
Power Failures. While outages affect data traffic, of course, there’s a difference when it comes to
telephony. People expect telephones to work even during an outage because homes often have a non-
electronic phone that simply plugs into the telephone outlet. This expectation is generally brought into
the workplace.
| Chapter 6 | Security
SPIT. Spam over Internet telephony is an alternative to telemarketing where one message can easily be
sent to thousands of recipients with the click of a mouse. In other words, your employees’ voice mail boxes
can become as overloaded with spam as their e-mail would be without appropriate spam filters.
Other Threats. There are new threats created and discovered daily. One such attack is the spoofing of a
phone number, which essentially allows a hacker to look like he or she is someone else, which is one of the
easiest ways for this person to steal an unsuspecting person’s identity. While individuals have learned not to
trust e-mail, it is still generally believed that telephone communications can be trusted.
Network Security Basics

Network security will lead to a secure IP telephony system. Your organization has likely taken steps such as
initiating the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) and installing firewall equipment, which protects the
organization against intruders and threats mentioned earlier. Since voice is just another application on the
network, the same precautions should be taken to secure the IP telephony equipment. Every form of
security should be applied, including physical, human, network, and system security.
• Physical security: Buildings, equipment rooms, data servers, and wiring closets should be off-limits to
anybody who is not authorized.
• Human security via security policies: Make sure your organization’s informational assets are protected
against inappropriate or unauthorized use by a renegade employee. Ensure hiring and system usage
policies are in place to govern appropriate use. Establish and strictly enforce policies having to do
with passwords and system usage.
• Network security: Again, create a multi-layered defense using firewalls, VPNs, and intrusion detection
or prevention (IDS/IPS). Make sure wireless access points use the highest level of access control and
encryption to prevent intruders from gaining access to your network and its resources.
• System security: Arm every desktop with anti-virus software to fight against spyware and other
malware. Utilize host intrusion prevention systems to protect servers against attacks.
Another force to consider is segregating traffic via virtual LANs (VLANs). It is a method of logically group-
ing devices or departments onto their own LANs. Isolating LANs from one another provides an additional
layer of security. It also reduces the impact of multicast or broadcast traffic since there are separate broad-
cast domains.
Finally, bandwidth management can be utilized to further guarantee bandwidth for business-critical,
latency-sensitive traffic like VoIP traffic. Bandwidth management methods include assigning a certain
priority to each type of traffic. VoIP packets should be assigned the highest priority to ensure voice traffic
gets through.
IP Telephony Security Basics

When your network is secured, take it a step further and utilize best practices for deploying secure IP telephony.
• Firewalls: Make sure the firewalls you’re using can handle the latency sensitive needs of IP telephony traffic.
• Switched environment: Use Ethernet switches (not hubs) to connect all your voice devices not only
for better performance but also to limit the possibility of a hacker getting onto a call because in a

switched environment, the flow of traffic is between devices and nobody can tap in.
• VLAN assignment: Assign voice to a separate VLAN (or separate VLANs). This segregates traffic
for improved performance and security.
• Priority: Prioritize voice traffic over data on these VLANs so that delay sensitive traffic gets
through even during a network attack. Ensure your network switches can prioritize based on
VLAN tags and support multiple queues.
• VPN: Use a VPN between sites, buildings, or departments to encrypt traffic. This is especially
important when it comes to protecting confidential employee information, such as social security
numbers. In addition, use software VPNs or VPN appliances for remote users to protect conversa-
tions from being tapped. Your system should also offer you the option of completely disallowing
remote access for an even tighter security option.
• Port lockdown: Lock down IP telephony traffic on the physical switch ports so that only autho-
rized MAC addresses can transmit over the port.
• Media encryption: Look for a solution that prevents eavesdropping by encrypting voice traffic.
This way, even if someone taps a voice stream, they are unable to decode or understand the conversa-
tion. Not all IP telephony system vendors offer this but it is a necessity for IP telephony security.
• Voice mail storage: Make sure that your voice mail storage is itself secure to prevent unauthorized
access of voice mail files.
IP Telephony System Security

Let’s look now at the IP telephony system itself. While you can secure your network in all the right
ways, you also need to choose a phone system that is secure itself. Consider moving away from a system
that uses Microsoft Windows for call control because of the security considerations. With a constant
stream of Windows security updates and patches, you’re risking downtime and security breaches.
Another architectural consideration to keep in mind is ensuring your system is distributed, which will
mean it has no single point of failure. A distributed system allows continued operation in the case of
worms, viruses, or DoS attacks. An attack will not disable the entire system if intelligence is distributed
amongst multiple devices.
Your chosen system should offer multiple levels for administrator permissions to limit control and
ensure unauthorized individuals do not gain access. Once you’ve deployed, reserve full access for just a
few key information technology employees. Ensure that a web-based management solution supports
secure management using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), which secures communications from the
interface to the server.
According to the SANS (SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security) Institute, a cooperative research and
education organization, VoIP servers and phones are at significant security risk. The organization’s 2006
annual update, SANS Top-20 Internet Security Attack Targets, indicates that there’s been an increase in
security scrutiny of IP telephony, especially on typical components such as the call proxy and media
servers, as well as the phones themselves. Some products have been found to contain vulnerabilities
that can either lead to a crash or a complete control over the server or device. “By gaining a control
over the VoIP server and phones, an attacker could carry out phishing scams, eavesdropping, toll fraud
or denial-of-service attacks.”
| Chapter 6 | Security
How to Mitigate IP Telephony Vulnerabilities
SANS has determined and published a list of things enterprises must do to mitigate the IP
telephony vulnerabilities mentioned in this chapter.
• Apply the vendor supplied patches for VoIP servers and phone software/firmware.
• Ensure that the operating system running the VoIP server is patched with the latest OS
patch supplied by either the OS vendor or the VoIP product vendor.
• Scan VoIP servers and phones to detect open ports. Firewall all ports from the Internet that
are not required for keeping up the VoIP infrastructure.
• Use a VoIP protocol aware firewall or Intrusion Prevention product to ensure that all UDP
ports on VoIP phones are not open to the Internet for RTP/RTCP communications.
• Disable all the unnecessary services on phones and servers (telnet, HTTP etc.).
• Use VoIP “protocol fuzzing tools” such as OULU SIP PROTOS Suite against the VoIP
components to ensure the VoIP protocol stack integrity.
• Additional caution should be taken at the product selection phase to ensure the VoIP
product vendor supports OS patches as they are released. Many VoIP vendors will void
support for unapproved patches and may take considerable time before approving them.
• Apply separate VLANs to your voice and data network as much as your converged network
will allow. Ensure that VoIP DHCP and TFTP servers are separate from your data network.
• Change the default passwords on phones’ and proxies’ administrative login functions.
Source: SANS Top-20 Internet Security Attack Targets, 2006 Annual Update
The Bottom Line

IP telephony requires the same level of security as your data network requires. You need to ensure you’re
receiving calls from trusted sources, you’re protecting your infrastructure from toll fraud, and you need to
make sure your voice calls get through, even when parts of the network might be bogged down by DoS
attacks, viruses, or worms. There are vendors that offer IP telephony solutions with additional layers of
security. You don’t have to rely solely on network security devices in place. You can take it a step further
and protect your IP telephony equipment so that voice communications and resources are as safe as
possible from hackers and other criminals. The next chapter will discuss wireless IP telephony, including
more on security, as well as QoS, reliability, and coverage areas.
IP Telephony from A-Z eBook | 4

7
Chapter 7
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Mobility is an absolute necessity, as is the requirement for customers to
reach anyone at anytime, anywhere. IP telephony is the ideal way to
meet this need.

7
Chapter 7
Going Mobile 1
Wireless Next 2
Prepping for Wireless 2
Sufficient Coverage 2
Scalability 3
Quality of Service 3
Seamless Roaming 3
Solid Security 3
Selecting Handsets 3
The Bottom Line 4
ii
In addition to cost savings, productivity improvements, and customer service enhancements, another
driving force behind IP telephony is mobility. Workers are increasingly mobile—from traveling sales
people to call center staffers who work from remote sites and even home offices around the globe to
serve customers 24/7. Mobility is an absolute necessity, as is the requirement for customers to reach
anyone at anytime, anywhere. IP telephony is the ideal way to meet this need. With it, organizations can
use distributed hunt groups to ring employees around the globe with the right skill set to ensure a
question is answered or an issue is solved immediately. As long as an agent with the skill set is logged
in, even if on another continent, the issue will be resolved just as if he or she were at their own desk.
With IP telephony, calls are intelligently routed based on calendars, so agents logged as out of the office
are reached via cell phone, etc. At the same time, the agent’s cell phone acts as an extension of their
desk phone with all of the integrated features, such as dial-by-name, transfer, conference call capabili-
ties, etc. This wireless integration is crucial, especially since you don’t necessarily need to purchase
specific wireless handsets or specialized handsets for traveling employees.
This mobility is not even noticeable to the customer base. There are IP telephony vendors that allow
employees to choose their device—for instance, a cell phone or home phone—and that device assumes
the identity and capabilities of his or her regular office extension. For example, the caller-ID informa-
tion provided when the employee makes a call can reflect their office number instead of the mobile or
home-office phone actually being used. In other words, caller-ID will indicate that the call is coming
from headquarters of their company. This is important to protect the employee’s privacy and strengthen
the corporate brand.
Going Mobile
With IP telephony, users are highly mobile, logging in from anywhere and gaining access to all the same
capabilities as if they were working at headquarters, at their desks, or within a call center building. With
IP telephony, to the outside world, it can seem as though your organization has call center locations
scattered around the globe, making help available 24/7. In reality, you are simply utilizing IP telephony
features such as time-of-day routing and call forwarding to make sure calls are answered quickly by a
live human being. Your employees can be working out of branch offices, at remote locations, or even at
home. Your workers are mobile and happy; your customers are being catered to and satisfied quickly.
You are also able to manage peak calling times by having the ability to add other employees, regardless
of their location, to the call center to help meet the overflow demand.
With IP telephony, users can also easily re-route their calls so that they are reached wherever they will
be working—they can make these changes themselves, without asking for IT assistance. This “find me”
feature also enhances customer service, as well as productivity, by ensuring every call reaches the right
person, regardless of where he or she might be working. An employee can even program his or her
extension to ring based on status—ring through when he or she is in the office, forward to a cell phone
when there is no answer, or forward to a colleague when the line is busy.
1 | Chapter 7 | Mobility and Wireless

Wireless Next
Once you’ve deployed IP telephony on your network, you’ll almost certainly begin to consider how you
might add wireless to the mix. With the broad adoption of Wi-Fi networks based on IEEE 802.11, your
employees will also inevitably ask you when you’ll be offering them mobile IP telephony since they’ll quickly
grow accustomed to the productivity-boosting and time-saving benefits. With wireless, employees can take
these benefits beyond the wired network.
With wireless IP telephony, employees are not tied to their desks and delays are further reduced. Consider,
for instance, the case of the sales representative meeting with the CEO. While in a meeting, urgent calls can
follow him or her to a wireless handset. Take this example into a hospital, and it can mean the matter of life
and death if a nurse is visiting a patient whose health suddenly degrades. The nurse need not waste time
running to the nursing station to call the doctor or paging for help but rather, he or she can call the doctor
directly from within the patient’s room from a wireless IP handset, provide information and take steps the
doctor is advising all in real time as a result of the phone consult.
On top of the savings offered by IP telephony, going wireless can also save your organization additional
money. For example, when an employee is working in another location other than his or her office, calls can
still find that person if they are free to talk, thereby eliminating any toll charges that would have been
associated with returning a missed call, had a caller gone to voice mail.
Prepping for Wireless

Until now, many companies have used proprietary wireless voice systems for their warehouses and distribu-
tion facilities, for instance, but today, there are standards in place—namely, Session Initiation Protocol
(SIP)—for call control over wireless LANs (WLANs). There are other requirements your network must
meet, such as sufficient wireless coverage, network scalability, Quality of Service (QoS), and seamless
roaming, and of course, security.
Sufficient coverage
You don’t want your users hitting dead zones while they’re in the middle of a conversation. It’s poor customer
service and costly to your business. Assess how many users you have in each location of your organization,
and consider the bandwidth requirements of the applications they are each running to ensure enough band-
width for voice traffic over the WLAN. You will need to maximize performance by adding a sufficient number
of wireless access points (APs) to each location where many users work. Keep in mind that since a WLAN is a
radio frequency (RF) network, the physical environment will affect the coverage capabilities of each AP. Walls,
glass partitions, and cubicle separators can affect the coverage area because these materials absorb signals.
Take into account the physical characteristics of your organization and buildings and design your WLAN plan
to meet these challenges. A physical survey before deployment will help you determine how many APs and
switches you’ll need to meet coverage requirements. Keep in mind, however, that the more APs you add to a
particular area will affect performance in terms of possible interference.

Scalability
As mentioned earlier, you can meet wireless traffic needs by adding APs to any given area. However,
there is also the risk of interference when too many APs are working too closely together. Be sure to
plan carefully and run tests to ensure smooth call delivery so that crucial voice traffic is delivered. Load
balancing is another scalability tool, which means traffic is load-balanced, or shared across APs, to
ensure users are sent through the most available AP at any given time. The IEEE is working on a
standard to allow wireless IP phones to discover all nearby APs available for service in order to utilize
the most appropriate AP. Before that is available, some vendors are offering their own similar
proprietary capabilities.
Quality of Service
Delays for voice should not exceed 150 ms, and given that Wi-Fi is a contention protocol, when an
access point is overloaded, voice quality will suffer. QoS is required for voice traffic whether it’s travers-
ing a wired or a wireless network. In other words, you want QoS for your voice traffic over the air or
over land so look for gear that offers over-the-air quality of service. Guaranteeing voice over other
applications minimizes packet loss, delay and jitter that results in poor voice quality. The IEEE is
working on a standard to address QoS for wireless networks, but in the meantime, the Wi-Fi Alliance
has released Wireless MultiMedia (WMM) as a subset of these capabilities. Vendors are currently
bringing WMM implementations to market now. WMM defines four priority levels to support varying
kinds of traffic, including voice, video, best effort for data, and background traffic, in that order.
Seamless roaming
As a user walks from one office or location to another, he or she counts on roaming capabilities of the
WLAN to keep the call connected. The underlying wireless infrastructure must seamlessly hand off the
user to the next location and perform the necessary re-association and re-authentication with APs,
while keeping calls free of interruption (this will allow a call to continue seamlessly across zones
without being mistakenly dropped between zones). A security standard is under way to allow users to
be pre-authenticated to neighboring APs before roaming, which will reduce the time it takes for a user’s
call to move between APs, and in the meantime, some wireless equipment vendors are introducing their
own versions of fast-roaming capabilities.
Solid security
IEEE 802.1X authentication should be used to verify a user’s identity onto the network, which will
ensure unauthorized guests are not allowed entrance to use the network or gain access to confidential
corporate information. Laptops and handhelds can support 802.1X authentication, and you need to
make sure your wireless IP phones, which have less computational capacity, are using less processor-
intensive authentication methods like MAC address or username and password.
Selecting Handsets
As discussed in Chapter 5, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), a signaling protocol, is used for establish-
ing a session in an IP network—from a simple two-way telephone call to a multi-media conference call
session with many participants. The VoIP industry has recently adopted SIP, a RFC standard (RFC
3261) from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), as the protocol of choice for signaling because
of its ability to facilitate Internet applications by working with other protocols. Essentially, SIP estab-
lishes, manipulates and tears down sessions, and its main purpose is to help session originators deliver
3 | Chapter 7 | Mobility and Wireless

invitations to potential session participants wherever they may be. It uses URLs to address participants and
SDP to convey session information and it’s easy to combine SIP with other applications, like Web browsers
and messaging. SIP can find and invite call invitees wherever they are, and it facilitates multi-media calls
with many participants who may join and leave at will.
It is possible to use traditional cell phones and they can become an extension of your IP telephony solu-
tion—this requires no new wireless network or SIP handsets. There are also many wireless IP telephony
handset vendors out there, but they don’t all offer the same features. Start your search by looking at your
needs first. Are you looking at wireless handsets for a manufacturing facility and therefore need a rugged
handset with dust covers so they don’t get dirt inside the keys? Are you a healthcare facility and need to
meet safety requirements so the handsets don’t interfere with hospital equipment? After you determine
your general needs, next move on to what you would like to see the handsets offer. Would you like the
handsets to be able to transfer calls? Would you like your employees to be able to conduct conference calls
from the wireless handsets? What’s your wish list on top of your needs list? These two things will bring you
to a number of vendors’ solutions, and then the final question you need to ask is, will it work with your IP
PBX vendor’s solution? Your choice will be very easy at this point—you’ll likely either have just one or two
vendors left from your list.
The Bottom Line

You need to be prepared to establish wireless IP telephony because your users, customer service, and the
bottom line will greatly benefit from mobile VoIP. You need to approach this the same way in which you
approached the wired IP telephony system: First, look closely first at your basic wireless requirements in
terms of handsets; next look at what features would be nice to have; and then look at what handsets will
work with your infrastructure and your chosen IP telephony system. As you go through each of these steps,
the number of solutions available to you will be reduced and you’ll be left with just a few options from
which to choose. The next chapter will go deeper into Quality of Service plus cover Virtual LANs and MPLS.

Quality of Service
8
Chapter 8
TABLE OF CONTENTS
This chapter covers Quality of Service (QoS) in detail, as well as your
options in terms of circuit transports. Then, it delves into the internal
infrastructure and the entire process of applying QoS.
Quality of Service
8
Chapter 8
Quality of Service 1
Voice Must Be Heard 1
WAN Circuit Transports 2
Leased lines 2
Frame Relay 2
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) 2
MPLS 2
Internet VPN 3
The Needs of High-Quality Voice 3

Applying QoS 5
Identification Methods 5
DiffServ or ToS 5
802.1p 5
VLANs 6
Prioritization Methods 6
Weighted Fair Queuing 6
Priority Queuing 6
Custom Queuing 6
Class-Based Weight Fair Queuing (CBWFQ) 6
The Bottom Line 7
ii
Quality of Service
As we drill down deeper into the details about your converged network, going over topics like handsets,
security, and mobility software, you are most likely growing more comfortable with IP telephony.
However, you probably still have some concerns, most notably, “How do I know my boss isn’t going to
experience poor audio quality during calls?” or “How can I be certain that all of our average 200 calls
are always going to get through, even on our busiest day, and when accounting is doing its weekly
check run?”
The answer is Quality of Service, or QoS. This chapter will cover QoS in detail, as well as your options in
terms of circuit transports, and then delve into the internal infrastructure and the entire process of
applying QoS. QoS can be boiled down to three major steps: Identify. Classify. Prioritize.
Voice Must Be Heard

Quality of Service is key when it comes to IP telephony implementations. Voice traffic must get priori-
tized so that it’s not delayed or discarded because of interference and congestion from other traffic. At
the same time, you may also have other high priority applications, such as video or other business
critical data, that also need higher than normal prioritization. But voice is always going to be high up on
your priority scale.
You need to consider four things that can affect voice traffic:
1. Latency (or packet delivery delay )
2. Jitter (or the variation in time between packets)
3. Packet loss (which can occur when too much traffic overflows buffers within the network causing
packets to be dropped), and
4. Burstiness (when your network undergoes bursts of packet drops due to jitter)
It’s bad business to have your voice traffic burdened by any of these effects. Distance alone on the WAN
circuit can cause delay, as can lower-speed WAN circuits. Delays cause call participants to start inter-
rupting each other because they believe the other person is finished speaking. Latency should not
exceed 100 milliseconds (ms) one way for toll-quality voice and must not exceed 150 ms one way for
acceptable quality voice. At 150 ms, delays are noticeable by the human ear, but callers can still carry
on a normal, comfortable conversation.
Jitter can cause strange sound artifacts to contaminate the voice and users will complain of degraded
voice quality. Jitter has many sources: network congestion, queuing methods used in routers and
switches, or network routing policies such as traffic engineering or MPLS paths used by carriers.
If your phone conversations do not sound right and callers have to keep repeating themselves or have a
less than satisfactory experience when they call, they’ll start looking for other ways to communicate
with your employees, or worse, they’ll start looking to another company to serve their needs—one with
which they can communicate more clearly. Your IP telephony system should sound better than your
previous phone system—after all, that’s why you made the switch. It’s the only way you’ll ensure that
you don’t lose business because of your technology change. IP telephony should increase—not de-
crease—your business and your bottom line.
1 | Chapter 8 | Quality of Service

WAN Circuit Transports
You’ve probably already chosen your circuit transport method, but the IP telephony exercise may have
made you re-think everything. The following descriptions are not intended to list everything about your
options but rather to ignite ideas about the differences so you’ll start questioning your options, which will
help you make the best choice for your organization.
Leased lines
Leased lines are the most private way to go. They are also the easiest type of WAN circuits to configure
guaranteed QoS. These circuits are direct point-to-point lines connecting your locations together. They can
be used for data, including packetized VoIP, or Internet services.
Frame Relay
Frame Relay circuits are more economical than private leased lines because the Telco providing the Frame
service shares bandwidth among many subscribers. This can reduce your costs, especially for long distance
lines, but commonly reduces your guaranteed bandwidth to less than your full circuit speed. Frame Relay
can guarantee bandwidth and packet delivery only if you shape your outgoing traffic to match your com-
mitted information rate (CIR). Properly engineered, Frame Relay can provide a cost-effective means of
transmitting IP telephony traffic and still guaranteeing QoS.
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)

All information sent over an ATM network is broken down into discrete packets. Unlike other packet
technologies, ATM employs fixed-sized packets, each consistently at 53 bytes long. This means cell delay in
ATM switches is predictable and manageable.
MPLS
MPLS, like Frame Relay, is a label-switched system that can carry multiple network layer protocols. Similar
to Frame Relay, MPLS sends information over a wide area network (WAN) in frames or packets. Each
frame/packet is labeled and the network uses the label to decide the destination of the frame.
MPLS header
Label Exp S=0 TTL Label Exp S=0 TTL Label Exp S=1 TTL IP header TCP header Payload
Figure 8.1 | MPLS works by pre-pending packets with an MPLS header, containing one or
more ‘labels’. This is called a label stack. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
MPLS networks can use Frame Relay, ATM or leased lines for the link layer.
Speed Your WAN

There are a number of products out there to speed your WAN. Known as “WAN optimization” products, they
accelerate applications by eliminating redundant transmissions, staging data in local caches, compressing and
prioritizing data, and streamlining chatty protocols. Other tools perform rate limiting to control the rate of traffic
being sent to your network while more critical traffic, such as voice, is being transmitted, for instance. Rate
limiting is performed by policing (discarding excess packets), queuing (delaying packets in transit) and/or
controlling congestion (manipulating the protocol’s congestion mechanism).

Be sure you’ve covered all your bases with your service provider and created a service level agreement
(SLA) that you are comfortable will guarantee you acceptable service delivery. If someone downloads a
huge set of files from the Internet that bogs down the WAN circuit, is that going to cause a dropped call
for your CEO or is your service provider going to have the right tools in place to make sure the call stays
up and the download takes a back seat to the voice call?
Internet VPN
A virtual private network (VPN) is a private network used by an organization or in many cases by a
company and its partners or associates, to communicate or coordinate confidentially over a non-private
network. VPN traffic can be carried over a public networking infrastructure such as the Internet.
Internet-based VPNs offer the least amount of administrative control to regulate and guarantee QoS.
The Needs of High-Quality Voice

Remember that you need to minimize latency, jitter and packet loss and ensure enough bandwidth so
that you deliver high-quality voice. In order to do this, you must have complete administrative control
over the equipment and the circuits, end-to-end, as well as all the tools necessary to ensure your
system remains up and running smoothly one hundred percent of the time. This is often impossible
based on budgets and equipment inventories. An alternative is to compromise in an area that allows you
to save money while giving up only so much control as to still deliver high enough quality voice where
degradation is barely recognizable or where it is entirely tolerable. In all LAN/WAN environments, there
will be packet congestion—it’s inevitable. The key is to guarantee that VoIP packets are prioritized so
that they are able to get through during those times of congestion, otherwise your QoS plan has failed.
Your spectrum of options runs from leased lines combined with feature-rich switches and routers at one
end of the spectrum, to Internet-based VPNs using consumer-grade WAN circuits (DSL, Cable-mo-
dems) from separate providers with no SLA.
With the first option, you have complete administrative control over all points of congestion and have
the configuration tools and features to easily identify, classify and prioritize your VoIP traffic. This is the
optimal choice if you have the budget for it. Managed routers with features that you cannot control and
circuits that you do not have administration control over can be less effective for your network and
often require more labor to ensure configurations are correct and guarantees are being followed by the
managed service provider. You have less power in terms of making forwarding decisions and changes on
the fly. At the other end of the spectrum, you have cast off all control over every components, circuit
and congestion point and have thrown your VoIP packets into the Internet with simply the hope that
they get there, but effectively powerless to help them arrive safely and on time.
Minimizing Latency
Latency (also known as delay) is the time that it takes a packet to make its way through the network to its
destination (or the time it takes the speaker’s voice to reach the listener’s ear). Actually, some latency is
inherent and constant due to distance and the number of devices in the path. As mentioned, large
latency values can cause hesitations and, therefore, call participants interrupting one another. There can
be a number of factors that contribute to latency, such as propagation delays (the time it takes an

electrical signal to travel the length of a conductor), queuing delays, packet forwarding delays, etc. Again,
end-to-end latency should be less than 150 ms for toll quality phone calls. Here are a few suggestions for
mitigating the impact of latency contributors:
• The faster the media, the less time it takes to serialize the digital data onto the physical links, and
the lower the overall latency. The impact on latency depends somewhat on the link technology used
and its access method. For example, it takes 125 microseconds to place one byte on a 64Kb circuit.
Placing the same byte on an OC-3/STM-1 circuit takes 0.05 microseconds.
• Although some delay is unavoidable regardless of the bandwidth used, keeping the number of
intervening links small and using high bandwidth interfaces reduces the overall latency.
• The packet forwarding delay is determined by the time it takes a router, switch, firewall or other
network device to buffer a packet and make the forwarding decision. Among the forwarding consider-
ations are which interface to forward the packet to and whether to drop or forward the packet against
an Access Control List (ACL) or security policy. Packet forwarding delay varies depending on the
function and architecture of the networking device. If a packet must be further buffered as a part of its
processing, greater latency is incurred. (Source: VoIP 101, Juniper Networks.)
Jitter’s Impact on Voice Quality

Jitter, a variable delay, is the time difference between when a packet is expected to arrive to when it
actually arrives. In other words, given a constant packet transmission rate of every 20 ms, new packets
would be expected to arrive at the destination exactly every 20 ms. Unfortunately, as Figure 8.2 shows,
this is not always the case. In Figure 8.2, packet one (P1) and packet three (P3) arrive when expected, but
packet two (P2) arrives 12 ms later than expected and packet four (P4) arrives 5 ms late.
Time
20 ms 20 ms 20 ms
Expected Arrival Time P1 P2 P3 P4
32 ms 8 ms 25 ms
Actual Arrival Time P1 P2 P3 P4
Figure 8.2 | Jitter. (Source: VoIP 101, Juniper Networks.)
Jitter is caused by congestion or other factors. Most media gateways have play-out buffers that buffer a
packet stream, so that the reconstructed voice stream is not affected. Play-out buffers can minimize the
effects of jitter, but cannot eliminate severe jitter. Although some amount of jitter is to be expected,
severe jitter can cause voice quality issues because the media gateway might discard packets arriving out
of order. In this condition, the media gateway could starve its play-out buffer and cause gaps in the
reconstructed waveform. (Source: VoIP 101, Juniper Networks.)
Tolerating Packet Loss

Packet loss is often unavoidable and can occur for a number of reasons, such as the case of a router or
switch overflowing, and in many instances, applications can tolerate packet loss (as in the case of a non-
critical file transfer). However, most real-time applications are less tolerant of packet loss. Although packet
loss is not desirable, some voice packet loss can be tolerated as long as the loss is spread out over a large
amount of users. If the amount of packet loss is very small in comparison to the users and over a large
amount of time, then it can be acceptable.

Applying QoS
When it comes to applying Quality of Service onto your enterprise network, it’s a matter of identifying,
classifying and then properly prioritizing data and voice packets. Your first step is determining the
method by which you will identify high-priority packets. There are a number of options available within
an enterprise network to identify and mark which packets are high priority. These methods include
VLANs, Differentiated Services Code Points (DSCP), also called DiffServ, Type of Service (ToS) bits, IP
Precedence, 802.1p markings, Layer-3 IP-address, Layer-4 source & destination ports, etc. Once you’ve
determined which method to use throughout your corporate network, you will use this method to
identify, and possibly re-mark, each high priority packet. (Keep in mind, your IP telephony vendor may
mark them with one method, and you may choose to re-mark the packets with a different identification
method.)
Once each high-priority packet has been marked with your corporate standard (for instance, DiffServ),
then at egress (as the packet leaves a piece of networking gear such as an Ethernet switch or router), it
needs to be prioritized above other packets. Keep in mind there are different levels of priority as well as
different queuing methods, so if your organization is a hospital, you will likely have healthcare applica-
tions, such as patient records and networked images transfer applications, assigned a higher priority
along with voice traffic.
Identification Methods
The following is a list, although not exhaustive, of identification methods you may choose to utilize for
prioritizing voice traffic. Again, your IP telephony vendor may choose one method and you may choose
another for your corporate standard, in which case you will be re-marking each packet with your
method choice.
DiffServ or ToS
Layer 3 QoS using DiffServ or Type of Service (ToS) bits is a system of identifying IP packets by assign-
ing values within the layer 3 IP header. Once identified, traffic can be classified into groups so that QoS
policies can be applied. For example, maybe Web access needs to be reasonably responsive but accept-
able e-mail response time can range from seconds to minutes. On the other hand, voice traffic (IP
telephony) and IP videoconferencing require a much higher level of priority. The type of end-to-end
QoS you choose to implement will depend on what type your routers and IP telephony solution support.
DiffServ and ToS add state information to each packet—allowing the network equipment to identify
different service flows and direct queuing and forwarding treatment appropriate to the service require-
ments. This enables routers to identify voice packets and mark them for higher priority treatment over
less sensitive packets. With DiffServ or ToS, each router on the network is configured to differentiate
traffic based on its class and each traffic class can be managed differently, insuring preferential treat-
ment for higher-priority traffic on the network.
802.1p
802.1p is a specification that gives Layer 2 switches the ability to identify and prioritize traffic. It works
at the media access control (MAC) framing layer (Layer 2) of the OSI model. Eight classes are defined
by 802.1p, which uses the priority fields within the packet’s VLAN header to signal the switch of the
priority-handling requirements.

VLANs
A virtual LAN, known commonly as a VLAN, is a method of creating logically independent networks within
one physical network. A few or many VLANs can co-exist within such a network. For instance, a small 50-
person grocery store can have 10 VLANs dedicated to different departments of the store and one VLAN for
information technology. A hospital could literally have hundreds of VLANs to segregate different staff
members, doctors’ groups, departments, and labs. Administratively segregating and separating people and
departments helps to reduce traffic on each VLAN so that each segment is performing optimally, aids in
ensuring confidential information is accessed only by authorized personnel, and ensures that latency and
bandwidth-sensitive traffic, like voice, is given priority. Often voice traffic is given its own VLAN (or mul-
tiple VLANs).
Prioritization Methods
Once you’ve decided how you’re going to tag your high-priority packets, next you have to determine your
prioritization method. Here are just a few.
Weighted Fair Queuing

Weighted Fair Queuing (WFQ) allows traffic flows to share link capacity but provides prioritization for
small, time-sensitive traffic flows. The advantage is that a large flow will not clog the pipe or create lengthy
delays for other smaller flows. WFQ is used in routers and switches that forward packets from a buffer that
works as a queuing system where the packets are stored temporarily. Packets are essentially waiting in
queues in buffer space, while WFQ estimates which packet flow will be “fastest” (the one with the minimum
number of packets) and transmits those smaller, time sensitive packets ahead of the larger, delay-tolerant
packets.
Priority Queuing
Priority Queuing supports multiple fixed-length queues from high to low, servicing the highest queue first,
then the next-lowest priority and so on. If a lower-priority queue is being serviced and a packet enters a
higher queue, that queue is serviced immediately. While good for important traffic, it can lead to queue
starvation.
Custom Queuing
Custom Queuing is designed for environments that need to guarantee a minimal level of service to all
protocols. It allows a customer to reserve a percentage of bandwidth for specified protocols. Customers can
define multiple output queues for normal data and additional queues for system messages such as LAN
keepalive messages. Custom Queuing can guarantee that mission-critical data is always assigned a certain
percentage of the bandwidth, but also assures predictable throughput for other traffic. (Source: Custom
Queuing and Priority Output Queuing, Cisco)
Class-Based Weight Fair Queuing (CBWFQ)

Weighted Fair Queuing classifies traffic into different flows based on layer 3 and layer 4 information, such as
IP addresses and TCP ports. However, WFQ has some limitations—it’s not scalable as traffic increases, and
native WFQ is not available on all high-speed interfaces. WFQ also doesn’t provide as much granular control
as is often needed. CBWFQ provides a solution to these limitations. CBWFQ gives an administrator more
control over what types of traffic classes are assigned to each queue and what unique prioritization meth-
ods each queue should be assigned including bandwidth, priority, queue size, reserved bandwidth, etc. The

bandwidth you assign to a class is used to calculate the “weight” of that class. The weight of each
packet that matches the class criteria is also calculated from this. WFQ is applied to the classes (which
can include several flows) rather than the flows themselves. (Source: Understanding Class Based
Weighted Fair Queuing on ATM, Cisco)
The Bottom Line

Quality of service is a must when it comes to real-time applications like IP telephony. Applying QoS is a
matter of identifying, classifying (or marking), and then prioritizing voice packets. This chapter has
outlined how to go from the outside (service provider) to the inside (infrastructure), from choosing the
circuit transport to choosing prioritization methods. There are many options that can suit your needs
and it will be a matter of discussing the choices with your service provider, integrator and/or colleagues.
The next chapter will cover other options that are available to you from various service providers,
including some new options being offered.
Resources:
http://www.wikipedia.com
http://www.networkworld.com/links/Encyclopedia/index.html
http://www.juniper.net/solutions/literature/white_papers/200126.pdf
960 Stewart Drive Sunnyvale, CA 94085 USA Phone +1.408.331.3300 +1.877.80SHORE Fax +1.408.331.3333 www.shoretel.com
Copyright © 2007 ShoreTel. All rights reserved. ShoreTel, the ShoreTel Logo, ShoreCare, ShoreGear, ShoreWare, ShorePhone, ControlPoint and Office Anywhere are trademarks or registered trademarks of ShoreTel, Inc.
All other marks are the property of their respective owners. Specifications are subject to change without notice. Part #EB-01/4.07
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IP Telephony from A to Z

Chapters One to Eight E

The Complete IP Telephony eBook

The Beneﬁts of IP Telephony

in detail so that you can make decisions about your deployment.

The Benefits of IP Telephony

The Added Capabilities 1

Customer Service Advantage 2

The Productivity Boosts 3

The Growth Factor 4

Some Features Available in IP Telephony Solutions 4

The Management Ease 4

All capital costs per user, by vendor 5

Total cost of ownership per user 6

Ready to Make the Switch 6

The Added Capabilities

 | Chapter 1 | The Benefits of IP Telephony

The Customer Service Advantage

IP Telephony from A-Z eBook | 

The Productivity Boosts

 | Chapter 1 | The Benefits of IP Telephony

IP Telephony from A-Z eBook | 

All Capital Costs per User

Less than 1,000 users 1,000 users and up

Figure 1.1 | All Capital Costs per User, by Vendor

 | Chapter 1 | The Benefits of IP Telephony

Total Cost of Ownership per

Cisco Avaya Nortel ShoreTel

Figure 1.2 | TCO per User

Ready to Make the Switch?

IP Telephony from A-Z eBook | 

 | Chapter 1 | The Benefits of IP Telephony

and select IP telephony vendors.

The Decision: Vendor

Convergence experience, expertise and vision 1

Expert, responsive support 1

Customer-focused approach to business 1

Issuing the RFP 3

RFP: From Concept to Paper 3

Last but Not Least: Ease of Use 9

The Bottom Line 9

1. Convergence experience, expertise and vision

Convergence experience, expertise and vision

Expert, responsive support

Customer-focused approach to business

 | Chapter 2 | The Decision: Vendor Evaluation and Selection

1. Lowering total operating costs

IP Telephony from A-Z eBook | 

Issuing the RFP

RFP: From Concept to Paper

 | Chapter 2 | The Decision: Vendor Evaluation and Selection

IP Telephony from A-Z eBook | 

Criteria Answer Score Weight Extended

 | Chapter 2 | The Decision: Vendor Evaluation and Selection

Criteria Answer Score Weight Extended Score Weight Extended

Centralized management of Yes 10 8 80 3 8 24

Intuitive GUI that simplifies MACs Yes 10 10 100 4 10 40

Workgroup capabilities Yes 10 9 90 8 9 72

Ability to integrate an IP telephony No 0 10 0 0 10 0

Least-cost routing functionality No 0 10 0 0 10 0

Score 950 Revised Score 718

IP Telephony from A-Z eBook | 

| Chapter 1 | The Benefits of IP Telephony

IP Telephony from A-Z eBook |

| Chapter 1 | The Benefits of IP Telephony

IP Telephony from A-Z eBook |

| Chapter 1 | The Benefits of IP Telephony

IP Telephony from A-Z eBook |

| Chapter 1 | The Benefits of IP Telephony

| Chapter 2 | The Decision: Vendor Evaluation and Selection

IP Telephony from A-Z eBook |

| Chapter 2 | The Decision: Vendor Evaluation and Selection

IP Telephony from A-Z eBook |

| Chapter 2 | The Decision: Vendor Evaluation and Selection

IP Telephony from A-Z eBook |

| Chapter 2 | The Decision: Vendor Evaluation and Selection

IP Telephony from A-Z eBook |

| Chapter 2 | The Decision: Vendor Evaluation and Selection

| Chapter 3 | Planning: The Implementation Calendar

IP Telephony from A-Z eBook |

| Chapter 3 | Planning: The Implementation Calendar

IP Telephony from A-Z eBook |

| Chapter 3 | Planning: The Implementation Calendar

IP Telephony from A-Z eBook |

How is Reliability Different from Availability?

Distributed vs. Centralized, Chassis vs. Modular

N+ Redundancy and No Single Point of Failure 4

The Bottom Line

| Chapter 4 | Ensuring Reliability in IP Telephony

IP Telephony from A-Z eBook |